


Souls Stood Ajar

by atlanticslide



Category: As the World Turns
Genre: Bodyswap, Curtain Fic, Domestic, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Moving In Together, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-31
Updated: 2011-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlanticslide/pseuds/atlanticslide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”</i> - Emily Dikinson</p><p>It's a merry-go-round of soul/body swapping between Luke, Reid, and Noah, bringing into focus unresolved issues between each of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. DAY ONE

**Author's Note:**

> Written originally for the LuRe Santa fic exchange, reposted with a new title.  
> Disclaimer: All of the characters or settings of _As The World Turns_ belong to CBS and Jean Passanante and others.  
>  Warnings: Confusing pronouns. Potentially confusing sex scenes. It's body-swap. Things get confusing.  
> Train? What train?

**DAY ONE**

There were boxes scattered throughout every room. The mess was a constant disturbance to Reid’s own self-proclaimed OCD tendencies. He had an operation later that afternoon, but nothing else pressing for a few days and had already cleared his schedule to take Thursday and Friday off before the weekend to do nothing but unpack, arrange, organize.

That, and fuck Luke on any and all surfaces possible in their new apartment. Moving in together was a huge step, for both of them, and Reid was determined to celebrate it rather than dwell on panic as a small voice in the back of his mind kept suggesting he do.

It had seemed a suggestion borne out of convenience after the third time Katie walked in on them half-dressed on the couch, Luke settled atop Reid’s lap and Reid’s hands painting Luke’s skin with touches, a gasp on his lips - “maybe I should get my own place,” Reid had grumbled as they hurried to pull their shirts back on and zip up their trousers.

“Maybe we should get one together,” Luke had suggested shyly, staring with far too much concentration at the buttons on his shirt.

And that’s how they’d ended up looking over classified listings with every meal they took together, like some kind of real, domesticated couple, and it was the domesticated that made Reid’s heart skip a little faster - not in a good way - particularly when Luke would flip from the _For Rents_ to the _For Sale_ s.

“I can afford it,” Luke had said, affronted, when Reid flipped the paper back to the month-by-month listings, nothing in this section more of a commitment than one year. “You can afford it. We could _definitely_ afford it together. Wouldn’t a house be nice?”

“A house is a lot of space,” Reid argued with a shake of his head. “A lot of upkeep, it’s a huge commitment.”

Reid had noticed the shuttered look that crossed over Luke’s face then, the way his eyes had turned down and his jaw clenched as he chewed on the inside of his cheek, the way he did when something was bothering him and fighting to emerge from his lips, and Reid waited for Luke to speak whatever it was.

But the moment passed by and Luke was quickly back to smiling, saying, “you’re probably right,” and patting Reid on the arm, studying the newspaper again with serious intent and circling several nice looking apartments, and within a week they had settled on what would be their new home.

And now there were boxes scattered throughout every room and Reid was tallying them up in his head as he rubbed his hand back and forth across Luke’s bare skin and things were pretty much perfect, save the boxes. Luke was in bed - in _their_ bed - asleep next to him, August’s morning light was filtering through their huge bedroom windows and warming his bare feet poked out from under the sheet covering him and Luke, no one would come barging in without warning - unless Luke gave his mother a key, which Reid had made him promise several times that he wouldn’t do - the nervous voice in his head was stamped down to barely a whisper, and he was cutting into someone’s brain later in the day.

Perfection.

Or rather, things were pretty much perfect - until Luke blinked his eyes open sleepily and looked at Reid and Reid said, “morning,” with a smile, turning his sultry up to eleven, and Luke’s eyes grew comically wide and his mouth dropped open, closed and opened again a few times like a fish, and he said with absolute terror, “what the **hell**?”

Reid felt his forehead crease deeply, and he stroked down Luke’s arm, automatically reassuring. “Um…what?”

“What the _hell_ is going on here?” Luke demanded, struggling to push himself up and away from Reid - difficult, as he was on the inside, closed on one side by Reid and the other side the wall. He backed himself up against it nonetheless, and away from Reid.

Reid dropped his hand, feeling burned. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Obviously not. Luke took the opportunity to dive across the bed, past and overtop of Reid, and tumbled to the floor. He landed with a womp and a smack and Reid tried not to get his legs tangled up in the sheet as he dashed to the floor next to Luke.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” he asked, worried, hoping it didn’t show in his voice. He grabbed Luke by the shoulders and struggled to keep a hold on him as Luke struggled and twisted his body away.

“Are you kidding me?!” Luke was slippery in Reid’s hands, panicked and wide-eyed. “The hell do you mean what’s wrong with _me_?” He pushed himself out of Reid’s hold and scrambled his backwards way across the floor.

“Okay, okay,” Reid held up his hands, placating. “Just calm down - ”

“I will _not_ calm down!” Luke yelled, banging one fist against the floor. “You must be really sick or something! It’s not enough you steal my boyfriend, now you have to _flaunt_ your happy little life together in my face - ” he glanced up at the nightstand next to him, at the framed picture of he and Reid together that Luke had insisted on unpacking the night before. Luke paused for half a second and looked struck by the photo from last winter, of them outside in the snow, Luke leaning back against Reid, red-cheeked and gazing up at his boyfriend as Reid smiled and looked a little embarrassed, eyes directed outside the frame. He grabbed the frame and waved it through the air wildly, as if proof of whatever insane nonsense he was trying to get through to Reid.

“And, what - _kidnapped_ me for some - some sick _joke_?” Luke continued furiously. “Where the hell am I, anyway? How did you get me here?”

Reid stared at Luke, frowning so deeply that his head started to hurt. For possibly the first time in his life, he had no idea what to say.

“Luke,” he said slowly, hoping that if he spoke clearly and monotone his boyfriend might come to his damn senses and stop speaking craziness. “You got here on your own two feet yesterday. You carried three boxes up the stairs - and once again, I’m sorry I insisted on a walkup, I’ll pay for your chiropractic bills myself - and then claimed that you were too weak to continue and your dad, bless his poor, naive heart, believed you and you and I had sex in the bathroom while your absurdly large family finished moving us in.” Luke’s eyes grew wider and wider still as Reid spoke. “You don’t remember any of this?” Reid racks his brain, trying to conjure up any information he might have stored there on spontaneous amnesia.

Luke was quiet for a long moment, face gone pale. Then, “You’re _sick_ ,” he spat.

“Okay, Luke,” Reid said calmly, speaking as he would to a frightened patient. “I think maybe we should get you to the hospital, let me run some tests, I think something’s wrong with - ” Actually, it was much more calm and kindly than he would usually speak to anyone other than Luke, and maybe Katie. It annoyed him _immensely_ when Luke was rude enough to interrupt.

“Excuse me? You’re calling me _Luke_ , and _I’m_ the one who needs his head examined? Have you completely lost your fucking mind?”

And that’s when Reid really started to worry. Luke hardly ever cursed. He said dopey things like, “shoot” instead of “shit” and “ticked” instead of “pissed” and usually only said “fuck” when it was in relation to Reid - usually with regards to sex and very rarely because he was annoyed, but it turned Reid on hugely either way. Even panicked or furious or upset about something, it was rare that he let a swear slip past his lips, which Reid always found both endearing and so desperately in need of teasing.

So either Luke was _really_ freaked out or really not himself this morning, but either way, Reid was growing more concerned with each panicked breath Luke took.

“I just think you need to calm down for a second and relax, okay?”

“I will not fucking relax!” Luke yelled, and Reid winced again at the profanity, sounding so odd from Luke’s lips. “I woke up with you… _touching_ me, how could I possibly relax? And where the hell is Luke?” he yelled and slammed the frame to the floor, sending glass flying.

Reid stared at the broken picture frame, jagged cracks cutting across the photo of the two of them looking happy, and it hurt more than it should have, while Luke scrambled to his feet and stomped quickly out the bedroom door.

Reid heard an “Oomph!” from the living room and finally got his feet to follow Luke outside, only to find him sprawled across the floor, one foot up on top of the box that he had, apparently, just tripped over.

“You okay?” Reid asked a stupid question as he came to kneel down next to Luke, attempted to draw his head over to look for a bump or cut.

“Don’t touch me,” Luke snarled and pulled out of Reid’s grasp, pushing himself up from the floor.

“Luke - ”

“Stop calling me _Luke_ , I’m not _Luke_!”

Reid nodded, pretending to understand. “Okay, who are you then?”

Luke gaped at him dumbly. “Are you kidding me?”

“Well, no, I think by now we’ve established that I am most definitely not kidding you.” He was getting tired of this. “So why don’t you stop acting like a little twerp and tell me who you think you are?”

Luke glared, hair falling across his forehead and into his eyes, though he didn’t seem to notice it. “ _Noah_ , you jackass.”

Reid resisted the sudden, unwelcome urge to burst into laughter right there, his rising concern a far greater one at the moment. Luke had never shown any signs of a personality disorder, and though the push-pull of Snyder vs. Grimaldi present in the past twenty-plus years of his life might be enough to wreck anyone, Reid was more than a little concerned about why it would be Noah’s personality that he would latch on to.

Before he could voice any of this, however, Luke’s cell phone rang through the apartment, the sound causing both men to jump. Luke continued to glare at Reid and made no move to answer it, so Reid went to retrieve the phone from the bedroom, telling Luke to, “Stay here, don’t move,” as he went.

He stopped short when he saw the name on the caller ID. Now he was beginning to wonder if _they_ were playing some bizarre prank on _him_.

“I think it’s for you.” Reid held the phone out towards Luke, who scoffed.

“It’s not my phone.”

So Reid flipped it open and put it to his ear, said tentatively, “Hello?”

“Reid!” came distinctly Noah’s deep timbre. “Oh thank _god_!”

“Noah?” Reid asked into the phone, and Luke’s head picked up at that.

“No, no, it’s me, it’s…” The voice on the other end of the line trailed off. “You don’t recognize my voice. Of course you don’t, it’s not mine…”

Reid had to sit down. “Who the hell is this?” he asked, feeling weary. He leaned his forehead on one hand.

“It’s me, it’s Luke, I know it doesn’t sound like me.” It was said in a rush that sounded nothing and everything like Luke. “But please just believe me, just trust me, it’s me, it’s Luke.”

Luke, meanwhile, the one there in the room with Reid, had risen from the floor and wandered over to stand a few feet away, hands wiping uselessly at his sides as if searching for pockets on the boxer shorts he was wearing to shove them self-consciously into. He frowned when one hand caught and ran over the scar at his side, and Reid watched him inspect it with careful fingertips.

“Okay,” Reid looked at Luke and spoke to the phone. “Want to tell me what’s going on here? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I’m starting to seriously consider just going back to bed and trying to wake up again in the real, normal, non-crazy universe.”

“No just - just listen to me, please, I - ” the voice - Noah or Luke or who-the-hell-ever pleaded. “I woke up in this strange bed, in this strange apartment, and I kinda freaked out at little at first, and I was running around for a couple minutes and thought I’d been kidnapped or something - ”

Reid glanced up at Luke or Noah or who-the-hell-ever in front of him, who seemed to have finally really noticed his half-naked state and had folded his arms across his chest.

“ - And then I ran into a doorframe and smacked my head, you know?” Rapid, nervous speak again, a convoluted recounting of events babbled out. “Like last night, when and I slipped in the kitchen and banged my head on - ”

“Jesus, Luke, again?” Reid said automatically. “You’re gonna give yourself an con - ” and then he stopped himself at the gasp on the other end of the line.

“You believe me?” whoever it was - Luke? - asked.

Reid really didn’t know, and said as much, but the words sounded so much like Luke’s and he couldn’t stop thinking of that broken picture frame in their bedroom.

“I think - I think something happened, and it’s not possible, right?” Noah or Luke said over the phone. “Except that I’m - I looked in the mirror, I went to the bathroom to run some water on the cut on my forehead and I looked in the mirror and it wasn’t my face.” He sounded scared at that, deep voice wobbling just a bit. “I think I’m, like, _in_ Noah’s body! Or… or something.”

Reid scrubbed a hand over his face. “I think I’ve gone down the rabbit hole,” he mumbled.

“What?”

Reid sighed. “If you’re really in Noah’s body, then I think he’s in your’s…” He felt absolutely ridiculous.

“Uh… ‘scuse me?” Luke or Noah in the room with Reid said, half-mumble, half-bitchface. “In my body? What?”

“Hold on,” Reid said into the phone, then tilted it away from his face to glare at the other man. “Hey, squinty, why don’t you stop interrupting me while I’m on the phone and go, take that nice ass you’re wearing into the bathroom, check out your reflection in the mirror. _That_ way,” he pointed with his thumb when Luke or Noah - and now he was actually leaning towards it really being Noah - glared and started walking in the wrong direction.

“Noah’s there with you? Is he okay?” asked Luke, and the earnest tone sounded so much like him that Reid was tempted to just go with it.

“Okay,” Reid began with a sigh, ignoring the yelp that came from the bathroom. “So I go to bed last night with my gorgeous, nearly-naked boyfriend in my arms, our first night in our home together.” He spoke congenially, as if relating a friendly anecdote. “And I wake up this morning, all set to get said boyfriend’s lips wrapped around my dick - ” he could almost hear Luke’s blush over the phone “ - and maybe some waffles before I have to head off to work and save some poor sap’s life. Instead, I get a near kick to the groin - and I don’t think I have to tell you how important that area is - and a screaming, whining mess wearing my boyfriend’s beautiful face, and the only thing we had unpacked now broken all over the bedroom floor.”

“Reid…”

Reid waved his free hand through the air as if Luke could see it and said, “Unless you two are playing some bizarre game with me, it’s not your fault. I just want to know what the hell is going on.”

“Me too,” said with a sigh.

Reid rubbed his forehead, quiet for a long moment.

“Are you really Luke?” His chest was beginning to ache, desperate for a touchstone.

“You said last night that you’d never wanted to spend your life with anyone until me,” came the soft reply.

Reid laughed at that and felt tears prick at the backs of his eyes. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was pretending,” and Reid could hear the smile there, even in the wrong voice. “You say the sweetest things when you think I’m asleep.”

“Asshole,” Reid muttered affectionately, suddenly missing his boyfriend as if just last night hadn’t been the (real) last time they’d seen each other. “Where are you?”

Noah - Reid supposed now that he really was Noah, and - _gross_ , he’d been stroking Noah’s naked back just a short while ago, they’d been in bed together - came back into the living room, the look on Luke’s face a storm.

“What the hell is going on?!” He asked for the millionth time, as if Reid had all the answers.

Reid didn’t hear Luke’s answer over the phone, and he glared up at Noah. “What did I say about interrupting?” he shot at Noah, then, to Luke, “Sorry, what?”

“I think I’m in L.A.,” Luke repeated. “If the thousands of cars heading towards the freeway outside are any indication. In Noah’s apartment, I guess.”

“How fast can you get back to Oakdale?”

“I’ll go to the airport right now - or, as soon as I can find Noah’s wallet, need some money and… Noah’s I.D., I guess,” he laughed sardonically at that.

Reid hung up without saying goodbye, looked up at Noah, who continued to glare.

“Luke should be here in four or five hours,” Reid sighed, unwilling to expend the vast amounts of energy it would require to fake a pleasant tone.

The glare Noah wore softened. “But he’s okay, right?”

“Aside form being stuck wearing your skin, which would be trying for anyone, yes, he sounded okay.”

The glare returned. Noah wore Luke’s bitchface well. “I need some clothes,” he said, folding his arms across his chest again.

Reid spread his arms out around him and leaned back on the couch. “Take your pick of boxes. I’m sorry we didn’t adequately prepare for your stay here.”

Noah looked around the room, as if taking in his surroundings for the first time.

“Luke told me that you guys were moving in together,” he said softly, probably to himself.

Reid straightened up at that. “When did he tell you that?”

Noah turned from his inspection of the apartment to look back at Reid. “He emailed me. Last week.”

Silence for a moment as Reid took that in. “You guys email often?”

Noah formed a smirk. One of Luke’s most appealing expressions, the one that said _I can beat you, ha!_ which, for some reason, Reid loved to see in Luke. Except now, when Noah’s words and stance and fucking _energy_ \- which Reid had always laughed at the idea of - were twisting it into something unpleasant. Reid hated finding Luke unattractive.

“What, he hasn’t told you that we’ve been emailing for months? I wonder why…”

Reid wondered if Noah had always been petty. How the hell had Luke stood it for so long?

He closed his eyes and raked his fingers through his hair, stamping down at the urge to say something spiteful back. He had no desire to get dragged back into a year-old fight that had been settled when Noah walked away and Luke let him. There was nothing to fight about. Luke had made his choice, and he and Reid were happy together. End of story.

“So, how’ve you been, Noah?” Reid asked instead, well aware of his biting tone. What the hell were they going to do together for _five hours_ until Luke got there? “Still haven’t managed to removed the stick from your ass, I see.”

“I need some clothes,” Noah ground out in reply.

“Check the bedroom, I think whatever Luke was wearing yesterday is still on the floor.” He nodded towards the bedroom with his head and didn’t say, _where I left them after I peeled them off him as I sucked on his skin_. He refused to be dragged down to Noah’s level. A _child’s_. And what went unsaid was pretty well understood anyway.

He took a moment as Noah marched of fin search of clothing to indulge his idiosyncrasies and wondered if Luke’s clothes and whatever else strewn chaotically around the apartment was something that he’d have to look forward to now that they were living together. Because that just wouldn’t fly.

He wondered, then, if looking at Luke in Noah’s body for years to come was something he’d have to look forward too as well. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach, and messiness suddenly seemed like a minor inconvenience.

“So,” Noah grumbled as he came back into the living room, pulling Luke’s t-shirt over his head as he walked. “What exactly is going on here?”

“You know, you’ve asked me that question half a dozen times already,” Reid replied, annoyed. He was sick of dealing with Noah already. “I don’t know what would give you the impression that _I’d_ know. I was just as surprised as you to wake up with _you_ in my bed.”

“Well you’re the neurosurgeon.”

“Why - you’re right, I am!” Good god, this kid was a moron. “Unfortunately I must have been absent the day they covered spontaneous body switching in med school, so I’m still on the same page as you. Uncharacteristic as that may be.”

Noah frowned and sat on a chair across the room, and when he spoke it was surprisingly unscathing.

“I don’t understand how this could be possible,” he said, leaned his head - Luke’s head - on his hand.

Reid didn’t have a reply for that.

“Okay, look, uh, I know this is probably the worst time for this, but I have to go to work pretty soon,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. If Luke were here they’d probably tangle together under the spray of the shower; he’d let Luke try to convince him not to go in to work today. They’d eat breakfast on top of the boxes in the living room before Luke would kiss him goodbye and Reid would joke about Luke being a good little housewife and Luke would probably swat him on the ass for it.

“You’re seriously going to just leave me here, go to work?” Is what he got instead.

“I have surgery this afternoon. It’s a pretty minor procedure, it won’t take too long. I’ll be back in a few hours.

“You can’t reschedule? If it‘s just a minor procedure…” Noah sounded a little frantic.

Reid was really out of patience when he said in reply, “No, actually, I can’t reschedule, because, as you may or may not be aware, some of us here in the real world outside of LaLaLand have jobs, it’s how we support ourselves. You may remember what that’s like, I seem to remember you slinging coffee around occasionally - that is, when you weren’t whining about the poor hand life had dealt you - ”

“I know how much you love your obnoxious pontifications, but is this going anywhere?”

“ - And I realize that you may be unfamiliar with the concept of _real_ work, at least within the capacity in which I perform, as you’re a little too wrapped up in your own self-importance - ”

Noah snorted at that.

“ - And that of your little movies, but my job involves helping people - as you may well recall from personal experience - and therefore, no, I cannot just reschedule things at your whim.”

Noah stood with folded arms across his chest for a long moment before he said, with Luke’s best glare, “Are you done?”

“I think so, yes,” Reid replied, more calm than he actually felt. “But I’ll let you know if there’s anything further I need to school you on. I’m sure it’ll come up.”

“You’re completely ridiculous,” Noah muttered.

“Thank you.”

Luke’s eyes rolled. “You know, I’ve never met anyone who feels the need to sing their own praises as much as you.”

“Well, I’ve never met anyone who whines about things that were his own fault as much as you, so I guess we’re even.” Oh god, Reid was letting himself really be dragged down. Noah’s presence was grating him so much, as if the kid should be blamed for whatever was going on even though Reid knew that Noah was just as clueless and freaked out as he was. Luke would be disappointed with him, he knew it, but he just couldn’t stop himself from lashing back at Noah’s sour attitude.

And reasonably, he didn’t really need to. He knew it. At least not as biting as he was. Noah was the one playing offense, taken suddenly out of his home and his life and thrust into a life that he still obviously wanted to share with Luke, which Reid was living instead. Reid was clearly the winner here, he’d known it as soon as Luke had kissed him back for the first time. He had the boyfriend, the new home together, the job he loved, everything he’d never really known he’d wanted; all he had to do was sit back and play a calm defense.

So he shook his head and bit back any further goading responses.

“Look,” he pushed himself to say. “I realize that we’re in a position neither of us would particularly like to be in, but I’m really not seeing any solution to this… insane problem at the moment, especially when we don’t even know how this happened.”

Luke’s jaw clenched and unclenched a few times, but Noah said nothing.

“You’re right, I could reschedule my surgery for another day,” Reid conceded. “But I’d really rather not keep this guy waiting another week. The surgery, it’s minor and quick but it’s - it’ll help relieve chronic pain that the patient’s been suffering with for years, and he’s been waiting for this for a while already. I’m sure you can empathize with that.” He was as gentle with the comment as he was able to be. “It shouldn’t take more than a few hours, I’ll probably even be back by the time Luke gets here, and there‘s not much we can do without him here anyway.”

“Fine,” Noah muttered, still looking unhappy. “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone? I can’t exactly go out around town looking like this.”

Reid didn’t say as he so desperately wanted, _even though this look is really a step up for you_ , and said instead, “No, I wouldn’t suggest going out like that. Can you imagine running into Holden or Lily?”

“Yikes,” Noah agreed, and at least they could both share that sentiment.

“Well,” Reid said, all faux smiles now. “If you want to get started on some of these boxes, that’d be a great help,” and with that he rose and retreated to the bedroom to get dressed, shutting the door against any retort Noah may have had for him.

Glass was scattered still across the floor, and Reid stared at it for a moment before stooping to gingerly sweep it into a corner with his hand. He picked up the frame and picture, minus the glass, and replaced it on the night table next to the bed with an odd feeling in his stomach.

He skipped his shower for the morning, which he hated to do, but he was eager to get out of the apartment and throw himself into work as soon as possible. He dressed quickly and grabbed his briefcase, thankfully spared from being buried beneath piles of clothes and books and furniture and whatever else recently moved into the new place.

He stopped in the living room on his way out the door to stare at Noah, who tugged at the bangs in his face.

“His hair’s getting pretty long,” Noah commented when he caught Reid staring.

“Yeah,” Reid agreed, watching someone who was not his boyfriend run Luke’s long fingers through his messy hair. It was all becoming far too disconcerting. “He’s been meaning to cut it for weeks but he keeps forgetting. Actually, I kind of like it long.”

“I do too,” Noah replied, and well. That was weird. “Or I did, before it was my hair and now it’s a little annoying, all in my face like this.”

“Yeah, well. Hopefully it won’t be yours for too long.”

“Right.”

Awkward. They stared at each other for a moment longer, and then Reid beat a hasty exit, sparing Noah a last curt nod before he left.

“Don’t break anything else,” he tossed over his shoulder before closing the door behind him.

The surgery was easy enough, and it was easy enough to forget about Luke and Noah and body-switching-craziness - when he was there at work he was _there_ and never anywhere else, even when his boyfriend was somewhere between California and Illinois - and before he’d even really thought much about it, six hours had gone by and Reid was showering his sweat off in the locker room and then heading for his car.

His mind still on his patient, patched up and in recovery, Reid fumbled absently with his keys and didn’t think about their unwanted guest in their new apartment until he spotted Luke and Noah sitting side-by-side on the couch amongst boxes in the living room - or Noah and Luke, and it suddenly all hit him again as Reid looked from one man to the other and back again, unsure which one to rush forward and hug.

“Reid!” Noah - Luke - someone - said, jumping up to rush at Reid, still rooted to his spot just inside the doorway.

Arms were thrown around Reid and he stumbled back, a little shocked, a little on edge, and remained standing stiffly where he was.

“Reid, you - you know it’s me, right?” Luke or whoever said as he pulled back, grasped Reid tightly by the shoulders for a moment and then reached up to stroke the side of Reid’s face.

“Yeah, yes, of course,” Reid answered automatically as he shifted uncomfortably and pulled back a bit to look the other man up and down. Noah’s small eyes and dark hair and thick eyebrows and squared shoulders, and Luke’s earnest expression in those eyes and the arch of his eyebrows and the stance of his shoulders. He wanted to touch Luke in return, wanted to run his fingertips comfortingly over Luke’s cheek as he’d done a million times before, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

“C’mon, Dr. Oliver,” Luke half-smiled nervously. “We already worked this out on the phone earlier, right? You know who I am.” He pressed a hand against Reid’s cheek, mirroring touches they exchanged the first few times they kissed, and Reid closed his eyes briefly, leaning into it, imagining Luke’s face before him instead of Noah’s.

The aching, wrong feeling in his gut would remain when Reid opened his eyes and found Noah’s still staring back at him, but, “Yeah, Luke, I know it’s you,” he replied, and covered the hand on his cheek with his own. Luke smiled at that, bright as Luke’s smiles ever were, and it looked strange on Noah’s face when Reid had only ever really seen the man dour or anxious or angry before now.

He laced their fingers together, dropping their clasped hands to their sides, and Luke squeezed his hand. Reid tried to focus on that touch, that reassuring pressure, and not the unfamiliar roughness of the hand held in his own or its size compared to Luke’s. He glanced over Luke’s shoulder to Noah, who was staring pointedly at the floor in front of him, before following Luke through the labyrinth of boxes to join Noah on the couch.

 _Really_ awkward. Reid on one side of the couch, Luke-in-Noah’s-body in the middle, Noah-in-Luke’s-body on the other side. No one said a word for several minutes and finally Reid couldn’t take the bizarre picture they must have been any longer and got up to retreat over to the armchair sat across the room. He stared at the two left on the couch, who looked at each other and then back at Reid, and Reid had to drop his head into his hands for a moment and massage his temples, the confusion just far too great.

“Okay,” he breathed after another few minutes of awkward silence. “Okay. Okay, so, this… I’m not really sure what to do, here. About this.”

“Yeah,” Luke agreed, and reached a hand up to run through his hair. He fumbled for a moment, amusingly, reaching for the longer locks he was used to combing his fingers through or having to brush out of his face, and his hand seemed to smack against his head in search of hair that wasn’t there.

“Any theories?” Reid asked with a sigh. No answer from the other two. “Anyone? I’m opening this up to the whole floor,” he said pointedly to Noah.

“Why would I know what to do?” Noah looked taken aback.

“You’re the filmmaker, don’t you study stuff like this?”

“Yeah, you know, shockingly, fiction is pretty different from real life,” Noah replied with an eye roll. Reid knew he was right, but he was desperate to reach for something. “I’ve seen movies in which people swapped bodies, but it never really occurred to me that it might be possible _in real life_.”

“Well, what happened in those movies?” Luke asked as he stood from his seat and moved midway between Reid’s chair and the couch on which Noah still sat, lowering himself to sit, elbows on knees, on a box of books.

Noah shrugged. “I don’t - witch’s spell, voodoo curse, someone touching a magic object.” He shrugged again.

“You watch really stupid movies,” Reid said.

“That’s not helping.” Luke shook his head.

“You asked,” Noah said to Reid, then to Luke, with very little irony, “Have you been to see any voodoo priestesses lately?”

Luke gave a wide, open-mouthed laugh at that, while Reid rolled his eyes.

“Okay, witch, curse, magic object, check, check, check,” Luke said ticking them off on his fingers. “Reid? Ideas?”

“I’ve really got nothing.”

“Anything?”

“I have no clue, I mean… I remember something in a book about drinking a potion to look like someone else…”

“That was _Harry Potter_ ,” Luke reminded him with a small smile. “You were reading it to Jacob last week.”

“Okay, well.” Reid leaned back in his chair, sat his hands on top of his head. “That’s really all I’ve got, unless this is a simultaneous psychotic break that the both of you are going through and you just really, really believe that you’re Luke and you’re Noah,” he nodded at one, then the other.

“No,” Noah replied at the same time that Luke shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Alright,” Reid sighed. “So. Nothing, then Luke?”

Luke flailed his arms around him as he shook his head and said, “I don’t – magic? Evil genie? None of us is awake and this is all just a really bad dream? Nothing really makes sense.”

“So,” Noah sighed.

“Yeah,” Reid agreed, then said, “Have we concluded that this definitely is not all a dream? I’m not totally convinced you guys aren’t just a very, very bizarre figment of my unconscious imagination.”

“I could punch you, if that would help convince you that you’re awake.”

“Noah,” Luke reprimanded.

Reid could hear Noah’s grumbling scowl, but refused to turn and look at him.

“Maybe we should talk to someone,” Luke said slowly.

“Like who?” Reid said, disbelief heavy on his tongue. He was pretty sure they’d all be institutionalized if they suggested any of this to anyone else.

“I don’t know, like, a psychic or something?” Luke suggested with a shake of the head, as if he couldn’t really buy his own words.

“I think you’ve been watching too much _Supernatural_ ,” Noah said with a small laugh.

“I don’t watch it anymore,” Luke replied, at which Noah’s eyes widened. “It got way too depressing, and could we all stop insulting one another’s theories, please? Can we just agree that this is a really effed up situation and doesn’t make any sense and just get over that already and accept that anything is possible here?”

Reid really wanted to kiss him then, but that probably would’ve made things much more awkward.

“Alright,” he declared instead, slapping his hands against his knees and then standing up. “You, I’m taking to dinner,” he pointed at Luke, then turned to Noah. “You, can’t come.”

“I beg your pardon?” Noah looked up at him from beneath Luke’s bangs, affronted. The eyebrows on his face, Luke’s, once so cute when they belonged to Reid’s boyfriend, raised comically up to his hairline.

“This was supposed to be a celebratory occasion,” Reid told them both. “Us moving in together. I was actually planning on a nice evening in together to mark the day, but that’s been shot to hell, and sitting around here staring at each other as we don’t figure out how to fix things isn’t going to do any of us or my blood pressure any good, so for now, I’m going out for a nice dinner with my boyfriend and you can’t come with us, unless you really, really want to be a third wheel.”

“Reid - ”

“You’re going to just leave me here again,” Noah said, more statement than question. “I’ve sat around here all day!”

“Yeah. We’ll bring you back something to eat.” He slapped Noah on the shoulder, all smiles and friendliness.

“Look, I know this must be terribly frustrating _for you_ ,” Noah’s words dripped sarcasm in Luke’s voice. “But we’re the ones with the actual problem here. I can’t just keep sitting around here doing nothing!”

“Noah - ”

“So make yourself useful, get online, and do some research or something,” Reid motioned flippantly with one hand as he reached for Luke with the other. “Google ‘body-switching’ or ‘body-swap’ or something along those lines.”

Luke took Reid’s hand and came to stand net to him, though Reid could feel the protest building.

“You’re really going to go out?” Noah asked, eyebrows still sky high with disbelief. “With him looking like that.”

“Well, it will be a chore to be seen with someone who looks like this, I agree,” Reid droned as he gave Luke a once-over.

“God, you’re such an ass,” Noah muttered. He glared up at Luke. “How could you possibly leave me for him?”

“I didn’t exactly - ”

“How did you stay with him for _two years_?” Reid asked Luke while glaring down at Noah.

“Enough!” Luke broke in, and both men turned to look at him. “Just shut up, the both of you!”

They did, and both turned to look at him.

“You’re both acting like morons and jerks and it’s not solving anything! We’re getting nowhere with this, and I’m not going to sit here and listen to you guys rip into each other all night.” He pulled his hand out of Reid’s grasp and folded his arms across his chest, the determined stance making him look even bigger in Noah’s body.

Noah looked shocked at the outburst, his mouth open and poised to contradict, but Reid jumped in instead before he was able to.

“Okay, you’re right, we’re just talking in circles about this and going nowhere.”

“Thank you.” Luke relaxed slightly, stiff shoulders dropping a bit.

“Let’s just… be reasonable about this for a second. Logical.”

“There’s nothing logical about this situation,” Noah said, for once not biting or goading, but honest.

“No, there’s not,” Reid agreed. “But let’s just think, I mean - this just started when we all woke up, right? No one’s done anything out of the ordinary recently, right?”

Luke said, “Right,” as Noah said, “Yeah.”

“What if we just give it the night, see if things right themselves by the morning.”

“And if they don’t?” Noah asked, dubious.

“If they don’t, then… I don’t know,” Reid replied honestly. “Go see a psychic?”

“You don’t believe in psychics,” Luke said with a small laugh.

“No, but I don’t believe in body-swapping either, so at this point I’d say I’m a little more open to alternative versions of reality.”

“Okay,” Luke sighed. “Considering there’s not much else I see us doing at the moment, that works well enough for me.” Noah still looked unhappy, but then, he would, Reid figured. “Take me to dinner, Dr. Oliver.”

They ended up at Java instead, because, “It’s really not fair to just ditch him and leave him behind in our apartment all night,” Luke said.

“I’m surprised you let me take you out at all,” Reid said as he held the door open for Luke and then walked through himself.

“Figured you could use a break,” Luke replied, giving Reid a soft smile before he turned to look up at the menu behind the counter.

“A break,” Reid repeated, confused.

“From Noah. I know he gets under your skin.” Luke grabbed Reid’s hand and rested their entwined hands on the counter.

Reid ignored the shocked stare from the barista behind the counter and ordered their drinks and a couple of pastries dripping delectably with a fruit-flavored sauce. His stomach rumbled with excitement. After collecting their coffee mugs and desserts Reid followed Luke to a table.

“He does not get under my skin,” Reid protested as they sat

“Reid, come on,” Luke said in a tone that was distinctively his even though it was coming from Noah’s mouth. He took Reid’s hand again across the table and it was as comforting as it was disconcerting to stare into Noah’s eyes with Luke’s sincerity. “I know how much he bothers you.”

Reid sighed, and didn’t have a response for that.

“I’m sorry, he has to be here, I’m sorry this is happening,” Luke said gently.

Guilt slammed into Reid. Luke took far too much responsibility for things that were not his fault, and Reid knew that he was being far too much of an ass with Noah around, but Luke was right; Noah’s presence really _did_ bother him, more than he’d ever admit out loud. Even dressed up like Luke, Noah set Reid’s teeth on edge, all of the words he’d been wanting to shout at the other man for a year brought up to a simmer just under the surface of his skin and begging to burst out.

But that wasn’t Luke’s fault, and Reid hated making him feel guilty for it.

“Stop apologizing,” he told Luke, giving his hand a squeeze before he released it to tap his fingers on his mug. “Unless you _have_ had an encounter with an evil genie recently that you haven’t told me about.”

Luke chuckled, rolled his eyes, pushed himself back from the table to cross his arms over his chest. “Good, I’m glad we can laugh over all this, it’s just _sooo_ hilarious.”

“ _You’re_ hilarious,” said Reid, and scooped a finger of foam from his coffee to flick at Luke, who laughed wider. Luke’s happiness was always infectious, and it made Reid smile almost against his will.

“But you know that picking fights with him is not going to help anything.”

“Yeah, well, tell him that,” Reid grumbled.

“I will.”

They were baiting each other, he and Noah, and Reid knew it, and as much as he tried to rise above, just a word from Noah would crawl beneath his skin and drag him down to the depths of childish nitpicking and it was hard to break the snide comments off once they started rolling from his tongue.

“I know how much he bothers you,” Luke said again, bringing his arms down from his chest. He rapped his fingers against the table. Noah’s fingers, longer than Luke’s, rougher at the cuticles, all these terrible differences that stole away pieces of Luke even as they sat beside each other. Luke wasn’t just the sum of his parts, but Noah was one of Reid’s least favorite people and hearing Luke’s words in Noah’s voice, seeing Luke’s expressions painted across Noah’s face, it all was bothering Reid far more than he wanted to admit.

“But you don’t have to feel insecure,” Luke continued, in that rumbling voice that belonged to someone else. “Not when it comes to Noah, or comes to me.”

Reid cocked his head back, shook it furiously, denied, denied, denied. “ _Noah_ does not make me - ”

Luke tapped his fingers against Reid’s to stop him mid-sentence and said, “I’m with _you_. I’m in love with _you_. Nothing Noah says is going to change that.”

“I know that,” Reid frowned, as if it was obvious even as he was unsure.

“Then stop letting him get a rise out of you!” Luke slapped Reid on the arm lightly and laughed at him.

“Seriously, _seriously_ , how did you stay with that jerk for so long?”

Luke sighed, “He’s not – he just, he doesn’t always behave his best when he’s feeling hurt - ”

“Maybe that’s because he’s an immature jack - ”

“Kind of like _you_ when you’re feeling threatened,” Luke said pointedly.

“Alright, alright,” Reid groaned, holding his hand up to quiet Luke. “Point taken. I’ll try to play nicer.”

“Thank you,” Luke smiled and took a sip of his coffee.

“One question, though,” Reid continued as Luke lowered his cup. The expression on Noah’s face was dopey, and Reid was pretty sick of having to look at him.

“Shoot.”

“Why didn’t you tell me – oh, crap,” Reid stopped suddenly, eyes widening at the woman who’d just walked into the café. And had spotted them. And was now walking over. He dropped Luke’s hand like it was on fire.

“What, what’s wrong?” Luke, facing away from the door and thus unable to see the approaching danger, drew dark, bushy eyebrows down.

“It’s your mom. She just walked in.” Reid’s hands balled into tense fists on the table.

“So?”

“So, she’s walking over here.”

“…So?” Luke asked again, and Reid wanted to smack him on that giant forehead.

“So she’s probably going to want to talk to you!” Reid leaned forward to yell in a clenched whisper, glancing up to see Lily Walsh getting closer, flashing him a polite smile before her attention turned down to Luke.

“And?”

Reid rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “She’s going to want to talk you, _Noah_.”

Noah’s eyes widened comically as the words finally sunk into Luke, who mumbled quickly, “I – I think I actually totally forgot for a moment what I looked - ” before he was interrupted by Lily’s arrival.

“Noah!” Lily exclaimed happily, at which Reid had to hold back a scowl. She was never excited quite like this to see Reid. Not that he cared.

“Um,” Luke fumbled for words, looking at Reid for a moment, alarmed. “I – Ms. Walsh, um – hi!”

Reid wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of this, and Luke so flustered by his own mother.

“What’re you doing here?” Lily asked as she glanced again at Reid and then back at Luke. Luke who looked like Noah, and she’d probably call them both crazy if they told her that. “Luke didn’t mention that you were going to be in town.”

“Well, he… doesn’t know?”

“And, having coffee with Reid Oliver,” Lily said, looking from Luke to Reid and back again curiously, disbelief in her hesitant tone. She drummed her fingers on the table, which Reid would have found interesting in its similarity to one of Luke’s habits, were he not wracking his brain for something to say. “That’s, um… surprising.”

“Yeah,” Luke said quickly, though that seemed all he could churn out. His hand waved through the air between he and Reid, stalling. “We, um… we’re…”

“Planning Luke’s birthday,” Reid supplied quickly. Luke’s mouth dropped open as he turned to look at Reid, eyes wide again and looking shocked. “Surprise party,” Reid added, ignoring the slight shake of Luke’s head and smiling pleasantly at Lily.

Her brow drew down and she stared at Reid for a long moment before saying, “Luke’s birthday.”

“Uh huh,” Reid smiled. Luke covered his face with one hand.

“It’s August,” Lily stated slowly, as if Reid was an idiot or something. She looked at Luke, who moved his hand down to cover his mouth but tried to smile at her innocently from behind it.

“That it is,” Reid replied, still all smiles.

“Luke’s birthday is in May,” Lily said, and _oh, shit_ , Reid was an idiot.

“Uh…”

“Yeah, yes, that’s true,” Luke jumped in, much to Reid’s relief. “But Reid here, he’s kind of a perfectionist and all, and I had some time and we figured we’d get a jump on it.”

Lily was still dubious. Not that Reid could blame her. She wasn’t always the brightest crayon in the box, but this was really the dumbest, thinnest of lies, and even Luke’s toddler brother would probably see right through it.

“Eight months in advance?” She raised her eyebrows, looking from one to the other again. “That’s quite a jump.”

“Yes, yes it is,” Reid replied. He waved his hand between himself and Luke, searching for something else to say. “But like – like Noah said, I wanted to get started early, and - ”

“And the two of you, doing this _together_ ,” Lily interrupted, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “That’s also quite a surprise. I was under the impression that you weren’t exactly… fond of each other.”

“Well, Noah has his moments of immaturity and just plain annoying,” Reid replied honestly, earning himself a swift kick under the table from Luke. “But he’s not so bad,” Reid added, patting Luke on the arm all friendly.

“Right back at you,” Luke said to Reid, glaring.

“…Right,” Lily said.

Reid smiled up at her brightly, probably a huge tip-off since he’d never been quite so happy or peppy around either of Luke’s parents. Luke copied his smile, plastering a wide grin of his own onto Noah’s face, and Reid was sure that Lily was just too confused to argue with them any further.

“Okay. Well. I’m really happy to see you back in town, sweetie” she said, turning to Luke, opening her arms to invite a hug. He took the hint and jumped to embrace her. Reid bristled a little, but didn’t look away. She’d never called _him_ sweetie. But really, he didn’t care. At all.

“How long are you going to be in town?” Lily asked as she pulled back and brushed a hand over Noah’s head.

Luke shrugged and didn’t pull away from the touch. _Mama’s boy_ , Reid thought affectionately.

“I’m not really sure yet,” Luke replied honestly.

“Well, make sure you don’t leave without coming by the house. The girls will be thrilled to see you.”

“I will, yeah,” Luke replied, and Reid wondered how strange it must be for him to speak to his own mother about his own family as if he was someone else.

Lily patted Luke on the arm one last time and gave Reid a polite smile before she turned to leave, saying, “Let me know what you guys come up with. For Luke’s birthday.”

“Will do,” Reid said, and with that Lily was gone out the door.

Luke watched his mother leave until she was out of sight, then turned to land a mighty glare upon Reid.

“I’m sorry,” Reid said, putting his hands up, placating.

“You _do_ know when my birthday is, right?” Luke said lowly.

“I’m sorry!” Reid said again. “It just came out, it was beyond my control. And I didn’t see you offering anything!”

“Okay, okay,” Luke sighed, flailing a hand through the air. “Why don’t we just agree that we both suck at lying to my mother and leave now before anyone else in my family sees us here together.”

“Agreed,” Reid said as he rose from his chair and took a quick, last gulp of coffee. He grabbed his pastry and followed Luke out the door, saying as they walked, “And you’d think your mother would be so easy to lie to.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“Nothing.”

Upon returning home – and Reid wished he could hold onto that thrill of _this is my home now, my home with Luke_ in the face of, well, Noah’s face, but it was hard to remain excited with the fear that he might be sharing his new home with Noah, at least in part – they found a note from Noah informing them that he’d gone out, sorry, he just couldn’t sit cooped up in their place anymore, but he’d be back soon and wouldn’t go anywhere where people might recognize Luke, promise.

Which was just fine by Reid, but didn’t bring them any closer to figuring out what had caused this absurdity or what they could do to fix it. So after staring blankly at each other for a few moments with no ideas for how to fix things coming forth, they silently agreed to table the issue and focus on unpacking, which was also fine by Reid, as the random scatter of boxes and bags throughout their home was almost as bothersome as the possibility that he might go to bed with Noah that evening - Noah’s body, anyway.

Luke was charged with shelving books, which Reid immediately realized was a mistake, what with medical journals mixed in with mysteries and travel books side-by-side with philosophy, and nothing was being alphabetized, and oh, it was a disaster. But Reid bit his tongue and breathed in deep and clenched his fingers when he saw Baloh’s _Clinical Neurophysiology_ placed next to the autobiography of Keith Richards, and resisted tearing across the room to reorganize it all himself. _Later_ , he promised himself, _later I’ll fix it._

Reid shuddered inwardly as he spied Krakauer’s _Into The Wild_ in one of Luke’s hands and the second book in the _Twilight_ series in the other - _Twilight_ was definitely going out the door as soon as Luke’s back was turned - and grabbed a large kitchen box, stalking off in search of a proper drawer for the silverware.

“Oh my _god_!” came a cry from the living room, and the box of silverware feel with a clanking crash to the ground at Reid’s feet before he was rushing back through the door towards the sounds of high pitched yelps.

“Luke?” he called before him as he trotted the few short paces from room to room, his feet shuttering to a stop when he saw Luke bouncing from foot to foot on top of the couch.

“What the hell are you doing?” Reid said, near a shout with his frayed nerves. “Are you okay?”

“There was - you have _no_ idea,” Luke started and stopped and started and stopped again, shuddering and shaking his hands nervously.

“What?”

“In the office. It was huge. _Huge_.”

“ _What_ , Luke?”

Luke shook his head, closed his eyes, said in a rush, “A wasp or a yellow jacket or something, I don’t know, I didn’t get a good enough look at it but whatever it is, it’s freaking _huge_.”

Reid looked at him, dumbfounded. “You’re in here freaking out over a bee?”

“That was not a bee, that was a pterodactyl.”

“Actually, I think you mean pteranodon - ”

“I mean pterodactyl,” Luke pointed at Reid with Noah’s familiar irritated scowl. “Don’t correct me when I’m freaking out.”

“Luke, didn’t you grow up on a farm? Haven’t you seen bees before?”

“Go in and look for yourself,” Luke told him, so Reid did, stomping determinedly towards the extra bedroom that was to be their shared office.

And, upon seeing the bat-sized bee zooming around the room with a buzz that could rival a chainsaw, Reid turned right around and slammed the door on his way back out, gave a full body shudder, and leapt on top of the couch beside Luke, as if that would offer them some protection from the mutant-sized insect in the other room.

“Holy shit,” Reid breathed out, clutching onto Luke’s arm.

“Right?!” Luke said, voice at a fevered pitch. He closed his eyes and shook his head again, which in turn made Reid even more anxious.

“It is _really_ disconcerting, you freaking out while you look like that,” Reid told him with a small waver in his voice.

“I’m sorry I can’t really do much about it right now,” Luke shot back. He held onto Reid’s elbow. “What are we going to do about that,” he nodded towards the closed door which, in Reid’s opinion, would never be opened again.

“We are just going to have to _move_ ,” Reid said emphatically.

“There’s a can of bugspray around here somewhere,” Luke said as he looked over Reid’s shoulder and peered around at the boxes nearby. “Maybe if you just spray the crap out of it - ”

“Me? No way, _no way_ am I going back in there,” Reid shook his head furiously.

“Well I’m not going in there.” Luke folded his arms against his chest.

“C’mon, I’m from the big city,” Reid argued, he thought reasonably. “We don’t have insects the size of birds in the city. You’re the farm boy, you have more experience with wildlife, that kind of thing shouldn‘t scare you.”

“Technically I think I’m the son of a farm boy, and I grew up _near_ a farm, not on it,” Luke replied. “And I’m not afraid of most wildlife, most _normal_ wildlife.” He pointed towards the door. “That’s not normal.”

And, as if he’d timed it all out perfectly, Noah chose that moment to return. He stopped just inside the front door and gave them both a long, curious look as Reid and Luke continued standing, holding each other, on top of the couch.

Reid sent Noah off, armed with a can of bug spray and a rolled up magazine and instructions to “earn your keep if you‘re spending the night here!”

Then, to Luke’s glare, he defended, “I’m playing nice!”

“Right,” Luke said and gave him a gentle shove.

The rest of the evening was a mess of glares and sarcasm between Noah and Reid, thinly-veiled insults sent back and forth just polite enough to prevent Luke from reprimanding either of them, and by the time dusk had rolled upon them, Noah was sitting, silent and sullen, in a corner of the living room with Luke’s laptop in front of him while Reid and Luke exchanged small, awkward touches behind him and meaningless wisps of conversation.

“I’m sorry we don’t have an extra bed for you,” Luke told Noah as he arranged pillows on the couch and smoothed imaginary wrinkles from the blanket he’d laid out.

“S’okay,” Noah mumbled in reply, then looked up to meet Luke’s eyes.

Reid watched them from the doorway to the bedroom and tried not to stare too hard, tried to allow them the moment, but couldn’t make himself move from the spot.

“You’re sure you’ll be okay out here?” Luke asked, like he was stalling for something but Reid couldn’t be sure what.

“Don’t have much of a choice,” Noah replied. “I’m not sharing your bed with you guys.”

“I wasn’t asking that,” Luke said, his expression somewhere between humor and disbelief with a quirk at the corner of his lips, perhaps unsure, as Reid was, if Noah was joking or serious. He’d better have been joking, as far as Reid was concerned. “We could always get you a hotel room, if this is too weird.”

 _Please say yes, please say yes,_ Reid prayed silently.

“No, it’s okay,” Noah shrugged. “It’s weird, yeah, but. Well. What can you do, you know?” He finished his sentence with a small laugh, at which Luke, somewhat infuriatingly, smiled back.

“We’ve been through worse, right?” Noah continued when Luke didn’t reply, touching the Luke’s shoulder almost curiously before he got a little bolder and rubbed his thumb over the collarbone that was really his own. “Kidnapping, paralysis, attempted murder, marriage, living under the same roof without being able to sleep together…”

“Noah…” Luke sighed and trailed off, stepping out of Noah’s reach. He turned to glance towards Reid, and Reid took that as his cue to dash and hide in the bedroom and pretend that he hadn’t been spying on their whole exchange.

Luke came into the bedroom after him a few moments later, and Reid started undressing, busying himself with something other than looking at Luke. Luke put up with it for all of a minute before crossing the room to place a hand on Reid’s back. Reid stopped, his shirt only halfway on as one arm still hung outside of its sleeve, and he dropped his head for a moment before turning to face Luke.

Luke laughed at him, helped him pull his arm through the sleeve, and then leaned down to kiss him, startling Reid out of anything he was about to say. It should’ve been perfect, would’ve been had the mouth against Reid’s own not felt so strange and unfamiliar, had the touch of a tongue against his lower lip not tasted so different from Luke’s. Had Luke not needed to lean _down_ to kiss Reid. He didn’t want this, Reid didn’t want to be this close to anyone else, he wanted _Luke_ back, all of him, and after a moment Luke seemed to sense his hesitation and hedging, and pulled back to look at him with dark, shuttered eyes.

“I’m sorry, that was - sorry, I shouldn’t have…” Luke reached up to again run his hand through hair that wasn’t long enough and sighed heavily.

“Luke, I…” Reid really didn’t know what to say, and when Luke looked back up at him, an insincere smile was plastered across Noah’s face, punching Reid in the gut.

“That was stupid, I know.”

“Luke, stop,” Reid said quietly.

“No, no, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.” Luke waved him off and turned away, went diving into one of the boxes near the foot of the bed in search of clothes to sleep in.

“It’s not _you_ ,” Reid told him. “I want _you_ , of course I always want you, it’s just…”

 _This body_ is what he’d meant to say, and Luke replied, “I know.” He pulled out an old pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and when he turned back to Reid they stared awkwardly at each other for a long moment.

“Um… should I go in the bathroom or something to change, or… you could turn around?”

They’d never been embarrassed in front of each other, even the first time they’d slept together, when Reid had expected Luke to be skittish and shy and Luke had surprised him with his eager boldness and pride in himself. But this body wasn’t Luke’s and though objectively Reid could admit that Noah was a pretty good looking guy, he had no desire to see that much of him.

So Reid dropped his head with a sigh and said again, as emphatically as he could, desperate for Luke to understand, “You know it’s not you, right? It’s not you at all, it’s - ”

“I know,” Luke said again, smiling small and only a little wounded. “This is probably way more of Noah than you’d ever wanted to see, right?”

Reid didn’t respond to that except with a small, sad smile of his own, and he turned to face the wall, listening to the shuffling of clothing echoing throughout the quiet room.

“Okay,” Luke said after a moment, and when Reid turned back around they stared at each other again for a moment, somehow a little less awkward than before.

“Um. Bed?” Reid suggested with a thumb pointing over his shoulder. Luke laughed lightly and nodded, and they climbed in, each taking up space on their own sides, and for a long time both were silent.

“He definitely still wants you, you know,” Reid picked up a thread of a conversation they’d had months ago about Noah. He rolled over onto his side to face Luke, and Luke did the same.

“He didn’t try anything,” Luke replied, which Reid wanted to laugh at.

“He might not have kissed you, but he wanted to.”

Luke didn’t say anything. Reid wondered if he was trying to think of something to defend Noah with.

“And touching you like that is trying something in my book,” Reid said as he reached out for Luke, stroking his side. “I think I would have justifiable cause to punch him.”

Luke laughed, breathy, cupped Reid‘s cheek, said “That would never hold up in court.”

“No, no, I’m pretty sure that as your boyfriend I’m absolutely allowed to go after anyone who touches you inappropriately or in any other way comes on to you. Noah would have no defense. He gave you up years ago.”

“He gave me up _a_ year ago,” Luke pointed out, but Reid wouldn’t accept that.

“That’s not the story I’ve heard.” He rubbed his hand across the expanse of Noah’s chest, ignoring the unfamiliar texture of the skin beneath Luke‘s shirt. “The way I hear it, he was treating you badly for a long time before head trauma ever came into the picture.”

“Is that what’s got you in such a tizzy over him?”

“First, I’m not in a _tizzy_ ,” Reid nearly stuck his tongue out at the idea. “Second, please don’t say _tizzy_ , it’s 2011, not 1955.”

Luke ignored that, said, “I can fight my own battles with Noah, you know. You don’t have to fight for me.”

“Well someone’s got to fight for you.” Reid knew he should be a little embarrassed by the cheesy, movie-heartthrob-esque words, but he meant it, and he tried to convey that to Luke with a hard stare.

Luke beamed at that, smiling with his whole face like Noah never seemed to, then closed his eyes and shook his head, awkward as it rest against his pillow.

“I think we’re dancing around the real issue here,” he said.

Reid looked at him blankly. They were?

“What if this is permanent?” Luke asked softly, staring at Reid’s chin rather than his eyes. “What if I don’t go back to looking like myself?”

Oh. They were.

Luke looked up then with searching eyes, like he was waiting for something big.

“You will,” Reid tried to assure him. “We’ll figure this out. You’ll look like yourself again.”

“But what if I don’t? What if I’m stuck in this body, what if I’m Noah permanently?”

“We’ll tell everyone that you’ve had major plastic surgery,” Reid declared with a wave of his hand.

“To look like my ex-boyfriend?” Luke snorted half-heartedly. “Right, ‘cause that wouldn’t look crazy and pathological at all.”

“There have been far weirder things to happen in this town; no one would question it. Maybe we could die your hair blonde, you could grow it out…” Reid was joking, mostly, but the idea wasn’t too far out there. “It wouldn’t be so bad.”

Luke didn’t smile at that as Reid had hoped he would.

“You really think you could get used to me looking like this?”

“Could you get used to you looking like that?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said honestly. “Probably. But it’d be worse for you.”

“How on earth would it be worse for me?”

Luke shrugged. “You’re the one who’d have to see me, look at me like this every day, with different hair and different eyes and different skin. You hate Noah. Could you really be okay with having to see him all the time when you look at me?” His eyes were guarded, and Reid hurt with the paled expression.

“Luke,” he said slowly, really considering his words and unsure exactly how to convey what he wanted to. “You’re more than just the sum of your parts,” he settled on, echoing the stray thought he’d had earlier. “I didn’t fall in love with your hair or your eyes or your skin - though I admit, those were all a big attraction, and it would be difficult to see you as someone else. But your hair, your eyes, whatever else, they’re just things, little things, they’re not who you are.”

“Reid,” Luke breathed, blinking heavily.

“Darker hair, deeper voice, a couple inches on you that weren’t there yesterday,” Reid continued on before Luke could speak. “None of that changes who you are or how I feel about you.”

Reid wanted to punch Luke in the shoulder or make a joke or something else to break up the string of hopelessly sugary-sweet words that wouldn’t stop spilling from his mouth, but the grateful smile Luke was giving him was just too perfect to erase just yet.

They stared at each other for a long time, Luke’s smile softened to a happy glow after a few moments as Reid ran his fingers over Noah’s arms and neck and the side of his face, trying to force himself to get used to the feel. Just in case.

“Lie back,” Luke whispered and Reid did. “Close your eyes.”

Kisses followed then, a trail of lips dragged over the side of Reid’s face and down his neck, avoiding his mouth, sucking here and there along the way - a soft bite to his adam’s apple, a lick at the hollow of his throat - and when Reid tried to raise his head to watch, Luke stopped and told him again to close his eyes and keep them closed.

Reid sighed and let his head fall back against his pillow, shifted to allow his shirt to be pushed up under his arms, and that mouth returned to his chest with a soft kiss. He tried to grasp Luke’s shoulders, wanted to run fingers through his hair, but he was stopped by rough hands pressing his wrists to the bed.

“Don’t,” came Luke’s reply when Reid tried to touch him again. “Keep them there,” and Reid sighed, a little annoyed, but did as he was told, too wrapped up in the feeling of a tongue running over one of his nipples.

He pictured Luke behind his closed eyelids. Luke’s floppy blond locks and his wide, open smile. He saw Luke beaming up at him with an irreverent spark to his eyes, the way he so often did just before he went down on Reid, and could see so clearly in his mind’s eye Luke’s tongue reaching out to flick over his navel and then Luke’s head dip lower to press a kiss to his stomach just above his groin. He hadn’t had much of a desire for anything, really, since Noah had stumbled over him and out of bed that morning, but as Luke’s mouth danced across his stomach and breath warmed over his skin, Reid found himself hardening with lazy slowness.

His shorts were tugged at until Reid lifted himself slightly to allow them to be pulled down to his knees, harder now not to open his eyes or to grab onto Luke and touch him everywhere.

He breathed Luke’s name and Luke buried his face in the juncture between Reid’s thigh and his groin in response for a moment before raising up to suck a bruise into Reid’s thigh.

Reid had to grab onto the bed with both hands when Luke took the head of his cock into his mouth, twisting the sheet beneath them until his hands were fisted in the material. His mouth felt bigger, kind of, wider as Luke took more of him in bit by bit, but it was only a fleeting thought that escaped Reid almost as soon as he’d thought of it, lost in the moist heat surrounding him as Luke began to suck gently.

It didn’t last long - soft to hard to the edge of the precipice in a few minutes, but Reid didn’t mind letting himself go quickly. It was a struggle to keep his eyes closed, to keep from touching, stroking, feeling Luke, but to do so would ruin the thinly built illusion constructed around them, so he breathed in deeply and let his mouth fall open as Luke’s hand joined his mouth on Reid’ cock, stroking what his mouth couldn’t reach.

Luke’s fingers tickled against Reid’s balls and stroked up his perineum, making Reid buck gently into Luke’s mouth. A few more hard pulls of Luke’s mouth and then it was gone, replaced by his hand once more, stroking furiously over Reid’s shaft until Reid was biting his lip and bucking his hips into Luke’s hand and coming with a quiet groan and then a sigh. He pictured Luke’s proud smile, imagined that Luke’s eyes were dancing with good humor, his hair falling across his forehead as his grinning cheeks grew pink.

Reid lay quiet for several minutes, breathing deep and relaxing back into the bed, until he felt Luke shift beside him and his weight leave the bed. He opened his eyes, finally, reaching a hand out to tug Luke back beside him, when he caught sight of dark hair and broad shoulders that stretched Luke’s t-shirt a little too tight. His hand dropped back to the bed immediately, momentarily taken aback as it hit him again, and he was glad Luke’s back was turned away from him so that he wouldn’t see the disappointment that crawled over Reid. He hadn’t lied when he’d said that he could get used to Luke looking like this, and would if that’s what it came to, but that didn’t prevent the distinct feeling that he had lost something as he gazed upon Noah’s body.

Luke wiped his hands on a shirt pulled from another box of clothes, then came back to wipe the sweat and stray bits of Reid’s orgasm from Reid’s stomach and chest and helped Reid readjust his clothing. Reid held his arm out again, this time reaching consciously for Luke, and Luke crawled back onto the bed beside him, letting an arm fall across Reid’s chest and his head tucked in against Reid’s neck. Reid had to readjust himself against the pillows with Luke’s newfound height and weight, and he felt Luke tense up next to him.

They laid like that for a while, Reid stroking Luke’s arm and listening to their combined breathing, when he began stroking a little lower, daring himself to press his hand against the chest the rest against him.

Luke stopped him, though, with a hand that quickly caught Reid’s and returned it to Reid’s own chest.

“It’s okay,” Luke said when Reid looked at him questioningly, then leaned across Reid to switch off the lamp on the table beside the bed, sending them into darkness.

Reid sighed softly and let Luke catch his hand, tangle their fingers together. He wanted to roll over onto his side, pull Luke’s arm to wrap around him and curl up against him - he’d never, ever call it _spooning_ \- but feared Luke would take it as some kind of sign, something that said Reid didn’t want to be near him, which wasn’t true at all, but Reid was growing confused in his lethargic mind and just kind of wanted to be held by Luke and have things be normal.

When he slept, after a time of turning things over clumsily in his mind, it was fitful and full of unsettling dreams.


	2. DAY TWO

**DAY TWO**

Reid wasn’t sure what woke him, but something did - something that wasn’t his alarm, even though he reached out for it with a stumbling hand before remembering that he wasn’t in his old room in Katie’s apartment anymore and thus his alarm clock was in a different spot now.

As was he, he came to realize slowly, blinking against the sunlight hitting him through the window which had been on the other side of the bed last night. Now it was just next to him. Which was odd.

He reached out blearily to pull the curtain shut - a drab, tattered orange thing left over by the previous tenant, and they’d have to go shopping soon, get something new to put up because that was just horrifying, maybe some blinds and -

“That’s not my hand,” Reid said as he stared at the hand he himself was holding up in front of his face. Then, “That’s… not my voice…”

“Reid!” came Luke’s voice from the other side of the bedroom door, and that was what had woken him, he realized, Luke shouting from the other room. Or Noah. It was confusing.

A bang on the door quickly preceded its opening, and then Luke or Noah or someone was there in the doorway. The bright, wide smile told him that it was Luke, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s fixed!” Luke exclaimed, his arms spread wide around him. “I’m back, I’m me!”

And that would have been enough to have Reid leaping from the bed to rush towards him, except that Luke wasn’t directing his attention towards Reid; rather, towards…

“Oh my god,” Reid said darkly as he stared at himself, and his own eyes stared right back at him, wide and dazed.

“What the hell am I doing in here?” the other man said, and Reid wanted to puke when the realization hit him.

“Wait, what’s…?” Luke began as his smile faded and realization dawned on his face as well. He pointed at both men in the bed, looked from one to the other. “Are _you_ guys now…?”

“If you’re in your own body,” Reid said slowly, not really wanting to say the words out loud and actually acknowledge it. “And I’m not in mine anymore…”

Whoever it was occupying Reid’s body, and it stood to reason that it was Noah, leapt from the bed at that and dashed out of the room with a small cry. Luke and Reid watched him go, Luke with a small smile forming.

“So now you and Noah have swapped bodies?” Luke said, looking for more amused than he had any right to be.

“This is _not_ funny,” Reid growled at him which, he considered, was one attribute of Noah’s deeper voice.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said through his giggling.

“I hate you.”

Luke laughed even harder at that and grabbed onto the doorknob to keep from doubling over.

“I didn’t laugh at you when you found out _you_ were stuck in this body yesterday!”

And that just set Luke into more giggling, hiccupping laughter.

“I know, I know,” Luke said between breaths. “I’m sorry, I can’t stop…” His words dissolved into giggles.

Reid lay back on the bed and covered his face - oh god, _Noah’s_ face - with a pillow, then screamed into it as Luke laughed. He felt the bed dip and pulled the pillow from his face to see Luke crawling towards him. And that was something to be grateful for, at least, that it was actually Luke’s smiling face back the way it belonged as he shuffled forward towards Reid. Reid reached out to brush back a stray lock of blond hair from Luke’s forehead. Luke beamed at him, his smile huge and happy.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know it’s horrible to laugh, I know. I suck. It’s just,” he stopped and broke into a grin then, his chest vibrating with what seemed the effort to hold back more laughter. He bit his bottom lip a moment, then continued, “This is so ridiculous - ‘I didn’t laugh at you when you were stuck in this body’ - it’s so weird, and now - and now you’re in Noah and he’s in you, that’s just too…” He lost the battle with himself and started laughing again out loud.

Reid punched him lightly in the shoulder and buried his face against the pillow once more. “I’m glad you think it’s funny that I am currently wearing the face of one of the few people I _truly_ cannot stand in this world.” His words came out muffled and slurred against the pillow.

Luke pulled the pillow away from Reid’s face and looked down at him with a, _C’mon, Reid_ expression on his face, all disbelief and _oh, please._ “One of the few people you can’t stand? I think you mean, one of the few people whose name begins with the letter N that you can’t stand or one of the few people six-foot-one-inches tall or one of the few people between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-four - ”

“No, I hate most people between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-four.”

“I’d better be the exception to that,” Luke said with mock-sternness.

“That’s why I said _most,_ Luke, of course you’re the only exception.”

Luke leaned down to kiss him for that, stilling and pulling away almost immediately after their lips touched.

Reid sighed, “Weird, huh?”

Luke was quiet, pensive for a moment, looking around Noah’s face. “Not in the way you think.”

It dawned on Reid, then, that while last night’s intimacy was awkward because Reid had never touched, caressed, kissed that body, Noah’s body, the strangeness now was because Luke had touched this body, many times.

He pulled away from Luke, feeling dirty suddenly, like he was violating someone or someone was violating him, somehow, though he couldn’t decide which. He touched the thick hair on top of his head, longer than his own, tugged at the strands and shuddered.

“It’ll be okay.” Luke’s voice was calm, soothing now, all traces of humor gone.

“Is it cheating if you sleep with your boyfriend in your ex-boyfriend’s body?” Reid pondered aloud to the ceiling.

“Reid,” Luke said quietly.

Reid ignored him. “I mean really, can you have sex with your boyfriend if trapped inside your ex? Huh, that‘s an awkward way of putting it…”

“It’s not going to come to that,” Luke pressed. “This’ll work itself out.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Reid turned his head to look at Luke. The pitch of Noah’s voice made him cringe.

“It will.”

“How do you know?” He hated needing reassurance, even from Luke, but it was obvious, he knew, how nervous he was growing.

“Because Noah and I only spent one day in swapped bodies and then we changed and I went back to normal.” Luke sounded so certain, and Reid really wanted to buy that logic, thin as it was. “It’ll change again. We just have to wait it out, maybe.”

“And if we don’t switch back?” Reid asked again, then repeated Luke’s own fears from last night back to him. “Could you get used to me like this?” He considered for a moment, then, before Luke could answer, said, “Of course you could; you’re attracted to this body - ”

“Reid!” Luke’s eyes grew wide, shocked, his mouth twisting unpleasantly.

“You were together for years, I mean, of course you’d probably still sleep with him if you had the - ”

“Why are you acting like this? When it was me and Noah yesterday, you were all reassuring and telling me that whatever happened it would be okay and you would love me no matter what and I’m more than just what I look like. Why are you so angry and - and distrustful that I’d feel the same about you? I mean is it just all about you, you’re pissed now because it’s you and not me?”

“No, because it’s _him_ and not me,” Reid shot back, not entirely sure what he meant.

“Stop it.” Luke was stern. “I’m not going to do this with you, I’m not going to indulge your insecurity or pick apart my relationship with you or my past with him.”

“Why not?” Reid lashed out, unable to stop himself from trying to hurt Luke while his own feelings were becoming frayed and raw. “You always used to pick apart your relationship with him to me.”

“You know what?” Luke rolled away from Reid and up, out of the bed. He turned back to point down at Reid, his face a mask of hurt anger. Reid turned away so he wouldn’t have to see it, pain falling heavy in his chest. “You sound _exactly_ like him right now, all the snide anger and trying to hurt me, push me away that made me end it with him.”

With that, Luke stomped out of the room angrily, slamming the bedroom door behind him. The broken picture frame on the bedside table rattled, and Reid glared at it.

Luke was right and Reid knew that he was acting like more of a jerk than usual. He hated himself when he said something wrong or nasty to Luke, hated to be the cause of that kind of pained expression on Luke’s face, but didn’t know how else to act, sometimes, when Luke made him nervous like this.

Relationships were stupid, they made people stupid - all that worrying over oneself, and _what is he thinking? Is he thinking about me? Does he want me? Does he want me as much as I want him?_ And even now, after a year of being together, still the stupid thoughts crept through his mind, worse now because there was love involved and more was at stake - _Does he **love** me as much as I love him?_ Most days Reid was sure that, yes, unequivocally the answer was yes. They were in love and it was stupid and lovely and hopelessly shmoopy and corny and their names circled in hearts.

Sometimes, though, the thoughts crept their way into his head, asked him, _Are you sure? Are you really sure that he doesn’t still want Noah, just a little bit?_

He rolled over onto his stomach, pressed his face into the pillow, breathed in a scene that was not Luke’s and should have been. He closed his eyes, tried to go back to sleep through the clambering, noisy thoughts in his head. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why being stuck in Noah’s body, Noah in his own, made him so suddenly fearful, when just last night he’d been certain that he could live the rest of his life happily with Luke even if Luke looked like Noah.

He turned it over in his head a few times as his eyes drifted closed and never quiet reached a conclusion.

He woke again some time later, when the sun had moved a bit and wasn’t beating quite so harshly through the bedroom windows, and smacked his lips open and shut a few times, desperate to brush his teeth. He wondered if Noah was prone to dry mouth in the mornings.

Out of bed and dressed for the day, now, Reid wandered from the bedroom in search of Luke, only to stumble and slip and fall to his butt heavily upon seeing himself sitting across the living room.

It was one thing to know intellectually that his mind was trapped inside someone else’s body. It was quite another to _see_ his body, looking disheveled and annoyed and staring right at him.

He glared at Noah, daring the other man to say anything as Reid pulled himself up to his feet and Noah, thankfully, had sense enough to stay quiet. Or maybe Luke had gotten to him too, told him to lay off the arguing with Reid.

So, after quickly scanning the room for Luke and finding Noah alone, Reid tried to be polite. “Sleep well?”

“Not really,” Noah grumped. Reid wondered, briefly, if he ever sounded like that when he was annoyed. “Your couch kind of sucks, and then I woke up… well, you know.”

“Yeah, that was no picnic for me either,” Reid replied. They stared at each other. _Awkward._

Reid’s body looked a little fuzzy round the edges as Reid stared, and in fact, everything did - Reid looked around the room and noted that everything further than a few feet in front of him seemed a bit blurry.

“Have you had your eyes checked recently?” He asked.

Noah rolled his eyes, leaned back in the chair he was sitting on to cross his arms over his chest. He made Reid’s body look like a petulant child, which was extremely annoying to Reid.

“Yes, Doctor, I go to my follow up appointments with a neurologist in L.A. every month, just like I’m supposed to,” he whined, which Reid had never heard his own voice do before.

“No, I mean an optometrist,” Reid replied, ignoring the obnoxious tone. He looked back towards Noah and couldn’t see him quite as clearly as he should have been able to and so found himself… “No wonder you squint so much, your vision is terrible!”

Noah looked struck for a moment, Reid’s mouth agape, before saying, “Wow, way to pick on the guy with a brain injury. Although, hey, wouldn’t _that_ be ironic - you now suffering from the aftereffects of the very thing you yourself treated me for and used to steal my boyfriend.”

Reid huffed a sigh and put hands on his hips, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Oh, excellent, yes, let’s start _that_ argument again. Didn’t we settle this a _year_ ago?”

“I don’t know, did we? I heard some arguing coming from your bedroom this morning,” Noah said. Reid bristled at that, unhappy to think that Noah had any knowledge of his and Luke’s relationship. “I distinctly heard my name thrown around a few times. He’s in there, by the way,” he added when Reid looked around again for any sign of where Luke had disappeared off to, nodding towards the closed office door.

“That’s really none of your business, dipshit, and all of this is really getting off the subject.” Reid only just barely managed to steer the conversation away from the potential fight that was looking before them. “You should go get your eyes checked.”

Noah was quiet for a moment, the face he wore drawn down and serious. Reid headed into the kitchen to start up the coffee machine, happy that Luke had packed it at the top of the biggest kitchen box and thus easily accessible and the first appliance they plugged in in the kitchen.

He came back out to find Noah sitting with slumped shoulders, leaning forward to rest elbows on his knees and his head bowed.

“Um…” Reid drawled out, staring at his own body looking dejected and, as he took in the way Noah wrung and massaged his hands, nervous.

Noah looked up and said hesitantly, “Do you… do you think there’s something wrong with my head again?”

Reid wanted to roll his eyes and comment on the distinct lack of brains inside Noah’s head, so yeah, maybe there was something wrong it, but Noah’s real fear at the idea was palpable in the wavering voice he used, so instead he answered seriously.

“Your head? Perhaps, you‘re are kind of an idiot. Your _eyes_? Yes, but I doubt it’s a big deal. I said go to an optometrist, not a neurologist. You probably just need glasses.”

Noah breathed out a huge sigh and almost smiled at that. “God, that’s - I really thought for a second there you were going to tell me I was relapsing or something.”

“Considering the extent of the damage and the procedures you underwent, it’d be rather surprising if you _didn’t_ suffer some damage to your vision which even my vast, vast skill and intellect couldn‘t entirely reverse.”

“But you don’t think it’s like, a sign of something worse, right? Like maybe the surgery didn‘t work or didn‘t totally fix me or something?”

“I’m very good at what I do, Mr. Mayer,” Reid replied smoothly. “And my guess is that your vision problems probably started before your accident. The fireworks and blindness and operation probably accelerated the rate of deterioration a bit, but I’m sure you’ll do fine with a pair of glasses.”

“Good,” Noah nodded. He seemed relieved, but it was hard to tell. “Good. That’s… I don’t know if I could go through all that again.”

Pain and suffering are all relative, and Reid knew that for a fact, so maybe it was just that he hated Noah or that he saw with his own eyes what the kid put Luke through during his blindness, but with all the patients Reid had worked on, all the patients he’d lost over the years and the ones who held on and survived, with varying cases of brain tumors, concussions, patients with memory loss, patients who lost touch with their entire personality after an accident, children with bleeding brains, Reid just felt _angry_ to hear Noah, this stupid asshole of a kid who still had his whole life laid out before him even without the use of his eyes, talk about losing his sight like his life had been over, like he’d gone through months or chemotherapy or years of pain. Mostly, though, it was his own patience worn thin and the edgy feeling that always claimed him after fighting with Luke that brought on this anger.

“You know, it’s really about time you stop whining about that, don‘t you think?” Reid pointed an angry finger in Noah’s direction, well aware at how random this outburst would seem. “You were blind, what, a few months? Most people who suffer an injury like that don’t _ever_ recover, and you act like it was this tragic, life-ending thing. Oh no, poor Noah, he has all these people around him who care and want to help him and a boyfriend who loves him just a little too much. Maybe you _should_ have your head examined.”

He ignored Noah’s shocked expression and turned on his heel to march off towards the office in search of Luke.

Luke had his back to the door when Reid walked in, sat atop a kitchen stool he must have dragged in there earlier in lieu of a desk chair as they had yet to finish their furniture shopping, and though he didn’t turn around when Reid opened the door, his shoulders still tense, his hackles rising visibly.

“What did I say about fighting?” Luke said without turning to face Reid.

So Luke was talking to him at least.

“You heard that, huh?”

“And what did I say about fighting my battles for me?”

“What did _I_ say about that?” Reid shot back.

Luke didn’t say anything to that, and Reid sighed, then tried for conversational.

“So. I was kind of an ass earlier. To you, I mean, Noah deserved it.”

“If that’s your way of apologizing…” Luke sounded weary and turned around to sit facing Reid. Reid pulled over a box to perch on.

He replied with a defensive sort of shrug, “I don’t think I have anything to apologize for.”

“You just admitted that you were being an ass!” Luke gaped

“I’m always an ass. You knew that when you married me - well, not married, we‘re not quite there yet, but that saying goes better like that than - ” he joked, hoping it would break the tension.

“Not to me, though,” Luke interrupted without humor. “You’re not supposed to be that much of an ass with me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He didn’t offer any explanation for his earlier behavior, and Luke didn’t ask for any, which wasn’t as comforting as it should have been. He didn’t quite have the words yet, though, unsure exactly how he felt, even.

Tension remained thick in the air, a heavy cloud over the pair of them as they continued to not talk for several long minutes, and it was agony. He didn’t want this.

He opened his mouth to say something, though he wasn’t sure what, and Luke’s eyebrows raised, waiting. Before he got the chance to form his thoughts, however, there was a knock at the door and Noah walked in, Reid’s phone held outstretched in his hand.

“Sorry to uh - someone’s cell is ringing,” Noah said, followed by an affirming chirp from the phone.

Reid took it and glanced at the caller I.D., then back up at Noah. He still couldn’t quite get over the shock of staring straight at himself, being able to see his body from all angles. Noah turned to shuffled cautiously towards the corner of the room and Reid took a moment to admire the back of his own head, then answered the phone with a sigh of, “Dr. Oliver.”

“Dr. Oliver?” came the reply from the other end of the line in the lilting voice of one of the receptionists in the neurological department whose name he hadn’t yet bothered to learn.

“That’s what I said,” Reid replied, annoyed already.

“I’m sorry, Doctor, you don’t sound - I didn‘t recognize your voice.”

Reid clenched his jaw, though it really wasn’t her fault. “It’s a cold. Congestion. Was there something you wanted?”

“Yes, I’m so sorry to bother you on your day off, Dr. Oliver,” she said in a rush.

“Oh, so you do remember that I’m not, in fact, working today and had specifically instructed that I not be disturbed.” He went for casually biting.

“I, um, yes, yes, I’m sorry,” the stuttered reply, which just made her more insufferable. “I - is there something wrong with your

“Well, while I do so appreciate the apology, perhaps you’d like to get to the purpose of this call, or is this just a social chat?”

“No, no, I’m sorry, it’s just that Mr. Williams is awake and he’s asked for you several times and - ”

“Unless Mr. Williams is in dire pain or is on his deathbed, I believe Dr. James is on duty at the moment, and if he’s unavailable Dr. Anderson is on call. I, however, am not, so if you would explain that to Mr. Williams - ”

“Yes, yes sir” - it amused him, sometimes, when staff members called him ‘sir’ - “And again, I’m really sorry to bother you while you’re off, but Mr. Williams is, well, he’s a little freaked out, and - ”

“‘Freaked out,’ is that your medical opinion?”

She was stunned silent a moment, and then, “I - well, that is, he - he’s experiencing some numbness in his shoulder and he’s insisting that you come in, he won’t speak with Dr. James.”

Reid sighed loud and long, hoping that everyone would hear his annoyance, and he glanced at Luke, who looked a bit concerned. About to acquiesce as he noticed Noah fidgeting out of the corner of his eye, he turned to look fully and remembered, quite suddenly, that there was no way he could walk into a hospital and treat patients looking the way he did.

“Um…” He tried to think of something to say. “Look, tell Mr. Williams that I’m sorry, but I really can’t right now. Today. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but not today.”

“I know you weren’t supposed to come in for the next few days, but it would only be a quick check - ”

“It’s not…” he cut her off, wanted to say _It’s not that I’m just being lazy, I really **can’t** , _but shook his head, knew that that wouldn’t really fly as explanations go. “There’s no way I can get there today.”

“Dr. Oliver, he’s being _very_ insistent, he’s become quite anxious since last night, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see one of your patients in such distress.”

Well, she really had some balls, this receptionist, to keep needling him after he’d said no twice. Maybe he’d have to learn her name after all.

“Alright,” he grumbled softly, trying to think swiftly of what he was going to do about this. “Okay, just give me a half-hour and I’ll be there.”

He could almost hear the smugness in her “Thank you, Doctor,” before she hung up the phone.

“You’re always so friendly,” Luke said when Reid snapped his phone shut, and Reid was pleased at the half-smile Luke gave with the words.

“I have a reputation to uphold,” Reid replied. “What would they all think of me if I started being _nice_ all the time?”

“What’s wrong?” Luke asked, ignoring the last.

“I have to go in to work,” Reid sighed. “The patient I operated on is refusing to take ‘he’s not working today’ for an answer and needs a quick once-over.”

“Uh huh,” Luke frowned, speaking slowly. “Uh… how do you expect to just walk in there and talk to people and talk to your patient while you look like Noah?”

“Yeah,” Reid said and scratched the back of his neck agitatedly. In the absolute last thing he ever wanted to do, he turned to Noah and resisted the inherent urge to duck his head. He faced Noah head-on and said, “I’m going to need you to come with me.”

Noah actually burst out laughing at that, and his own laughter sounded hollow and insincere to Reid.

“Right,” Noah said with a last chuckle. “Like I’d go anywhere with you, to help _you_ out.”

Luke breathed an exaggeratedly loud sigh, disruptive enough so that both Reid and Noah turned to look at him.

Reid gathered his strength.

“Look, okay, _believe me,_ I don’t want to ask for your help any more than you want to give it to me.” And Noah’s body was good for something, Reid supposed; his voice was very good for growling at someone else. “But there’s no way that I can do my job looking the way I do, and I really need to go in there. It’ll probably take less than twenty minutes.”

Noah glared at him. Reid delighted, just a bit, at how perfectly his own face could form a scowl. Even if it was Noah doing the scowling. He should have been more upset, he reasoned with himself, that Noah was manipulating his body, and worried about what the kid might do to it, but more than that Reid had taken to admiring these different aspects of himself that he never really got to see. No wonder people were afraid of him - he glared so beautifully.

“I’ll buy you lunch?” Reid offered.

“You think I’d really want to go to lunch with you?”

“I said _buy_ you lunch, genius, not eat it with you.”

Noah continued to glare.

“Do you want me to play the _I saved your eyesight_ card? Because I will,” Reid warned, and Luke actually stifled a laugh at that.

Noah rolled his eyes huge and exaggerated, looked as if he was the most put upon man in the world, and threw Reid’s hands up when he finally said, “Fine! Fine, let’s go. I‘m holding you to the lunch offer, and this is the last time you can ever use that _I saved your eyesight_ crap for anything.”

“Deal.”

And it was the second day in a row that Reid didn’t get his morning shower, which was extremely bothersome, but he wanted to get this gigantic ball of awkwardness that going to the hospital with Noah was sure to be out of the way as soon as possible. They drove the short distance to the hospital in relative silence. Reid wondered as he drove and glanced occasionally out of the corner of his eye at Noah, if this was permanent, would he have to go through med school again? Not a possibility he’d relish at all, but at least, he knew, he’d demolish any competition in his class.

“…So,” Reid said after a while, well aware that they’d soon have to come up with a reason for both of them to be at the hospital together.

“Yup,” was Noah’s succinct reply. Reid groaned inwardly, incredibly annoyed with Luke for declining to come with them. “I don’t really feel like hanging out with either one of you right now,” he’d said, then added cryptically to Reid, “But we’ll talk later.”

To Noah, Reid said, “You know, it really just gets more and more awkward each time I Try to converse with you.”

“Yeah, well, same here.”

“Alright, well let’s just do this and we don’t have to speak again for the rest of the day, okay? How are we going to play this?”

“Play what?”

“People are going to wonder why I’m there with you, why I’m the one talking to the patient.”

Noah shrugged - _very helpful,_ Reid didn’t say - and then said, “I don’t know, uh… you’re making a documentary about… about the medical field or neurology or something?”

“Okay,” Reid agreed. “That’ll get us into the buildling. What about the patient? You don’t know anything about brain surgery or his condition, you can’t exactly fake your way through it.”

“That’s all you,” Noah told him. “I got us in the building, you take it from there.”

“Alright,” Reid grumbled as he pulled into the hospital’s garage.

And, as luck would have it, no one questioned Reid tailing Noah “for _artistic_ purposes,” Reid said dramatically as he shook hands with people he’d worked with for a year as if just meeting them for the first time.

He did, however, catch a few whispers as he and Noah passed by a couple of doctors and nurses, whispers of “I think that’s Luke Snyder’s ex…” and didn’t want to stick around and hear what they might be saying about the two of them, Reid and Noah, being there together.

Noah, for his part, smiled friendly and charming at everyone they ran across.

“Nurse Tyne!” he said with a warm pat on the woman’s shoulder. “How are you today?”

“Um… I’m fine, Dr. Oliver,” she replied carefully. “Thank you for asking.”

“How did you know her name?” Reid asked Noah as they continued on down the hall.

“You know, for a supposed genius, you’re really not that smart?“ Noah smiled as he spoke and Reid glared heavily. “It’s on her nametag. How long have you worked with these people?”

“Long enough that you are really going to confuse them with all this nice, friendly chit-chat.”

“That’s the plan. Doctor…Jansen!” Noah said to the petite woman trying to brush past them unnoticed as he glanced down to read the name on her I.D. badge. “How’s your day going?”

“Fine, thank you Dr. Oliver, yours?” She asked without stopping to wait for an answer.

Noah let her go, walking instead over to a man across the hall. Reid groaned again. “Doctor… Matthews, great day out today, huh?”

“Excuse me?” Matthews replied with raised eyebrows, gripping the clipboard in front of him tightly.

“Not too hot, not too cold,” Noah rambled on like a dopey, friendly idiot. “Perfect summer day, isn’t it?”

“You - you’re talking to me today then?” Matthews stuttered out. Second year resident, and Reid had no patience for his anxious stumbling, told him as much only days before.

“Of course!” Noah exclaimed with a smile. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you told me the other day never to even so much as breathe in your presence until I’d gone back to medical school and tried again?”

“Oh, god, _that,_ ” Noah psshed with a wave of his hand. “I was just being an dick, had a bad day, not your fault, didn’t mean to take it out on you, sorry about that.”

Matthews’ eyes grew wide and he seemed shocked out of all speech.

“Actually, you know, I’m kind of a dick all the time, aren’t I?” Noah went on, prompting Reid to grab him by the arm.

“Don’t you think we should get going, _Doctor_?” he said harshly, but Noah brushed him off with a shrug.

“I - well I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Matthews stuttered out.

“Oh, I would,” Noah replied, still smiling like an idiot. “It’s just because, well, I’m kind of a tool and I tend to cheat people to get what I want, so, I just wanted to come by and apologize for what a dick I am - ”

“Alright,” Reid said, grabbing Noah by the arm to pull him away, leaving Matthews standing confused and gaping behind them. To Noah he said darkly, “Quit it.”

“Nurse Andrews!” Noah said, ignoring Reid to address the tall, dark-haired woman in front of them. “How’s it hanging?”

“Pardon?” she replied, surprised, and looked from Noah to Reid and back.

Reid stepped in front of Noah and extended his hand before Noah could get another word in. “Hi! I’m Noah Mayer, you probably haven’t heard of me because, contrary to my own diluted, overblown sense of self-importance, I haven’t actually made any movies yet aside from some likely pretentious, artsy film-school types, but I _will_ keep plugging away at it, at the expense of anyone else who cares about me because gosh darnit, I’m just that dedicated and selfish.”

He rocked back on his heels and gave Noah a smug smile and Noah glared daggers at him. Neither one paid much attention to Nurse Andrews’ tiled head and wide, confused eyes as she backed slowly away from the both of them.

“Alright,” Noah ground out. “Where’s this patient’s room?”

They managed to get up to MR. Williams’ room without further incident and without running into anyone else who would stop to talk to them like - god forbid - Chris, and Reid handed Noah his lab coat and stethoscope to wear before they walked in. He forced a smile for his patient, remember almost immediately that he wasn’t the man that Mr. Williams wanted to see, and the man that Mr. Williams did want to see was shrinking back a little behind Reid and looking uncomfortable.

Reid nudged Noah none too gently with his shoulder and Noah stumbled forward awkwardly.

“Mr. Williams!” Noah said with brightly false cheer, not quite so confident now, it seemed, that he couldn’t blatantly needle Reid and had to act more evenly. “Um… how’s it going?”

Reid wanted to bang his head against a wall.

“Who’s that?” asked Mr. Williams, a rather nervous man at the best of times, Reid had learned of him. He looked Reid up and down warily.

“Uh…” Noah mumbled dumbly.

“Intern,” Reid swiftly picked up. He strode forward to shake the patient’s hand. “Noah Mayer, nice to meet you. Dr. Reid, here, was kind enough to let me trail him and talk to some patients, get my feet wet so to speak, get some experience with follow up procedures, post-op care. Because it is, of course, just as important a part of one’s medical training, becoming a doctor, as the procedure itself, right? As long as you don‘t mine my being here, of course.”

And Mr. Williams seemed to buy it, gave him a hesitant nod and said, “Yeah, okay, sure.”

“Excellent,” Reid clapped his hands together and came over to rest a hand on Mr. Williams’ shoulder, pressing lightly with his fingertips and watching the man’s eyes to gauge any reaction.

“So, Mr. Williams,” he said, reaching for the penlight poking from the breast pocket of the lab coat Noah wore. “I - _we_ hear that you woke up after surgery last night with a bit of numbness in your shoulder.” He flashed the light over Mr. Williams’ eyes, watched his pupils dilate satisfactorily.

“Yeah, yeah,” the patient replied, nodding rapidly, eagerly. “The pain’s gone, which is great - I can’t thank you enough, Dr. Oliver,” he shifted to say to Noah. Noah smiled back, looking uncomfortable. “But I haven’t been able to feel anything up here - ” he gestured at the area of his arm that Reid was handling - “since I woke up, and I can’t move my hand very well because of it, can’t move my arm much at all.”

“I did explain to you, Mr. Williams,” Reid began, then stopped abruptly when Mr. Williams’; looked up at him curiously. “Rather, uh, I’m sure that Dr. Oliver explained to you that some numbness is to be expected immediately following surgery, and some difficulty in moving your arm is normal for the next week or so.” He went over the aftereffects that they had, in fact, addressed prior to the procedure.

“Yeah, you did, Doc,” the patient said, speaking again to Noah, and Reid grew annoyed. More so with the nickname than anything else.

“Mr. Williams, didn’t I tell you not to call - ” he stopped, caught himself again. “Never mind. Sorry. Continue.”

“Okay…” Mr. Williams began again slowly, looking back from Noah to Reid. “Like I was saying, I know the numbness was supposed to be normal and all, but this much? I mean, still, even this morning?”

Reid sighed, frustrated that he had to be dragged all the way in here just for this. There were lots of different reactions to be had for various medical procedures - some people were brave, some reserved, some overly nervous, some appropriately nervous. Some people asked a million questions, some asked next to none. Some people wanted to hide themselves away and pretend that there was nothing wrong, nothing to deal with or address. Some people were a combination of all of the above. Mr. Williams was one who needed reassurance, constant, and with his condition, Reid understood why, so he took a breath and tried to be patient.

“You had surgery less than twenty-four hours ago,” he told the other man. “The fact that it’s working and you’re no longer feeling the pain you had is a very good sign. But you need to give yourself some time to recuperate; it’s not just going to happen instantly.”

“But - ”

“Mr. Williams,” Reid said shortly. “We - you discussed all of this. I know how eager you must be to get out and flex your muscles now that you’ll be able to again, and I understand it must be frustrating to feel like you’re not quite there yet, but you _must_ have a little patience with this. Our bodies weren’t made to take heavy beatings and just get right back up. We’re not any of us Superman - though some of us are closer than others,” he added, glancing at Noah to admire his own finely tuned physique.

Mr. Williams’ brow furrowed a bit and he asked, pointing vaguely from Reid to Noah, “Are you two…?”

“What?!” Reid snapped his head back to stare at the patient in shock. “ _No_!”

“I’m just asking because, you know,” Mr. Williams turned to Noah. “You mentioned something about your boyfriend once, and I just thought that - ”

“ **No** ,” Reid said again firmly, taking a step back from the bed Mr. Williams rest upon, while Noah shook his head furiously and put his hands up, taking a step back himself.

“Really, really,” Noah said, looking wild-eyed. “Really, no, not at all. At _all_.”

“Uh huh,” Mr. Williams said, looking again from one to the other, dubiously chewing on the corner or his mouth.

“Okay, look, Mr. Williams,” Reid continued, trying to ignore the gross feeling of something crawling up the back of his neck at the thought of him and _Noah_ \- gross. No. “You can recover form this. You _can_ get your life back to where it was before your accident. But even this is not going to be an instant fix. You can’t expect to just wake up and have things be the way they were, but you have to trust me that this is a normal part of the healing process, and you seem to be progressing normally for where you should be. And I know you want out of here, but rushing things is not going to make that happen, so why don’t you try to ease up a little on yourself and take the time off for what it is, and trust us to ”

Mr. Williams looked down at his hands, folded together in his lap, and continued chewing on the corner of his mouth, biting a bit on his lower lip.

“Okay,” he sighed finally.

“So. No more calling us in here on our days off, right?” Reid continued, waiting for Mr. Williams’ agreeing nod. “You’re in Dr. James’ very capable hands, so I don’t want you to worry about anything alright?”

“Yeah, okay, Doc,” Mr. Williams replied, breathing out a deep breath. “Sorry,” he said to Noah with something akin to relaxation beginning to seep over him as he adjusted himself back against the pillows.

Mr. Williams bid them goodbye and thanks as they left, and Noah was quiet on their way back to the car, the both of them ducking occasionally to avoid doctors that Reid didn’t want to risk and interaction with.

“So,” Noah said slowly as Reid pulled the car through the garage and back out onto the street, thinking as he drove about how annoyingly frivolous a trip to the hospital this was. “That was you being a doctor, huh?”

“You’ve see it before,” Reid reminded him without taking his eyes off of the road. “You were on the receiving end once.”

“Yeah, but that was before,” Noah said, and Reid didn’t have to ask before what. “It’s a little weird, seeing you all… nice. Sort of. What was his operation for?”

“He had an accident a few years ago, was struck partially in the spine. He was okay, mostly, except for chronic pain that developed as a result in his shoulder. I operated to implant a pump in the top of his spine that’ll give him a more consistent stream of meds to help relieve the pain.”

“Wow,” Noah commented, which Reid had to agree with.

“So, food?”

“Yeah, whatever is fine,” Noah replied, looking distracted. Or so Reid assumed. He was pretty good at reading some people’s faces - Luke, of course, was a pretty open book with his emotions - but it was nearly impossible to gauge exactly what Noah was thinking when Reid had never really seen how his own facial expressions appeared to other people.

“Okay, look, here’s the thing,” Noah said then without preamble. “It’s _possible_ that I’ve been…”

“A jerk?” Reid finished for him, guessing off the top of his head.

“Rude,” Noah corrected. “It’s - there’s no excuse for it, really - although you do have to admit that you’ve been a - well, been rude to me too. But. In any case. Sorry.” It sounded like he was struggling with the words, which Reid could understand. He wasn’t quite ready to start offering Noah apologies just yet himself.

“Shouldn’t you be past some of those issues by now? Resenting me and being pissed at me for something you imagined I did?”

Noah snorted, and from the corner of Reid’s eye it looked like he wanted to argue with that, but held it in. “Yeah, well. L.A., it’s harder out there than you think.”

“I think it’s pretty hard.”

“It’s harder than that, even,” Noah replied, shaking his head. “There’s a _lot_ of filmmakers out there, it’s almost impossible to get noticed, even when you have help, and. Well. I… I can’t help thinking that it’d be easier with him there, and. And, I miss him. More than I thought I would when I stormed off last summer.”

“Well that I can understand,” Reid said softly.

“You can.” It was a question, Reid could tell, but not phrased as one.

Reid shrugged, kept his tone light and his eyes on the road. “I miss him when I spend too long of a day at work.”

He didn’t look at Noah; didn’t want to see the look of hurt his face probably held - didn’t want to feel bad for him.

“Right,” Noah said, short and curt. “Well. I know that I did some crappy things last year.”

Reid bit back everything that wanted to come bursting forth, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. Nothing good would come from telling Noah that _I did some crappy things_ qualified as the world’s most gigantically douchy understatement, so he held on and waited for Noah to get to the point of his sudden confession.

“I know that…” Noah continued, stopping briefly to blow out a breath. “It wasn’t all because of you. That I lost him.”

“If you want to know why you _lost_ him, maybe you should start with asking yourself why you think of him in those terms,” Reid said lowly, carefully, like walking through a minefield.

Noah tensed up beside him, but also seemed to want to keep things tightly civil for the moment.

“I know I probably don’t have much of a right to be mad,” Noah went on, bypassing Reid’s last words. “But it’s hard not to be sometimes, when I still want…” he shrugged and wouldn’t finish the thought, but Reid knew what he meant there too. “And when I’m back here, and you guys are all… coupley. It’s weird, seeing him with someone else. Even after a year. Realizing that I don’t know him best anymore. And I’m stressed out and I miss having him even just as a friend, and this whole body-switching crap is just… it’s all making me a little nuts.”

“Okay,” Reid said slowly, unsure of how to respond to all of that. He felt like he was supposed to apologize or something, but he refused to apologize for being in love with Luke and being lucky enough to have Luke love him back. Noah was the one who drove Luke away.

“I don’t want him to be unhappy,” Noah said softly, speaking more to himself than Reid. “But it’s hard seeing him happy with you.”

“You guys _could_ be friends, you know,” Reid pointed out. “I know he wants that too.”

“Yeah,” Noah agreed. He didn’t say anything for a few moments and Reid kind of hoped the conversation was over. And also that Noah might forget about Reid buying him lunch because they were almost back to the apartment building and he really wanted a shower and suddenly _really_ wanted to see Luke and just generally wanted to be home.

“He emails me,” Noah spoke up again somewhat abruptly. “He emails me every so often, like every few weeks or so to update me on stuff going on around here and his work and occasionally mentions stuff about you guys. Like you moving in together.”

“Yeah?” Reid hedged, wondering where this was going.

“He emails me, but I’ve never written him back. So I kind of lied about that.”

Reid kind of wanted to laugh at the kid. “I kind of figured that, Noah.”

Noah turned to look at him for the first time through the whole conversation. “What?”

Reid pulled the car to a stop and put it in park, shifting in his seat to face Noah as well. “Shocking as this may come to you, Mr. Mayer, I know Luke pretty well. I know that he doesn’t let go of things easily - or people - and I know how much he’d like to keep in touch with you. It really doesn’t come as a surprise that he’d try to contact you. It also doesn’t surprise me, knowing what I do of you, that you’d ignore it.”

“It’s not like that,” Noah shook his head. “I’m not trying to ignore him, it’s just..”

“What?” Reid asked, an edge of mocking in his tone, though it was somewhat hard to recognize in Noah’s voice. “Too hard?”

Noah shrugged and Reid nodded as he turned the car off and pulled the key from the ignition.

“That’s what I figured you’d say,” Reid replied to Noah’s non-committal answer and got out of the car, leaving Noah behind without too much of a care whether he followed behind or not.

“Didn’t kill each other, huh?” Luke asked upon Reid’s entrance. Reid took the light tone as a sign that Luke’s mood had improved some, and he went over to where Luke sat sorting through DVDs in the living room to brush his hand through Luke’s hair, resisting the urge to lean down and kiss him.

“I did consider driving into a tree on the way home, but what good would it have done to kill myself as well as him?”

Luke laughed lightly even as he thwapped Reid in the knee with a DVD box. Noah came in and glanced uncomfortably at the two of them, then announced that he was going to going to make some phone calls and catch up on some “work stuff,” whatever that meant. He borrowed Luke’s laptop again, though Luke didn’t seem to mind, and disappeared off into the office, behind a shut door.

Reid turned his attention to stare down at Luke, sitting cross-legged at his feet. Luke smiled up at him, and that bothered Reid, for some reason, that Luke seemed to be letting him off the hook for their earlier argument.

He shoved hands into his pockets and shifted his gaze down to Noah’s feet, taking in for a moment the slightly larger feet that were growing rather uncomfortable in his own smaller-sized shoes.

Reid’s mouth opened, formed the beginning of a word, but he didn’t quite know which one, and so he stalled for a moment, stood there like that with his mouth open as he looked at the floor and searched for how to speak again.

“The thing is… I…” He didn’t have the words, really, for _I’m afraid, you make me afraid, and I hate being afraid._

He stopped again, darted his tongue out to wet his dry lips. “What if you’re happier with me like this?”

Luke looked up at him and stared, eyebrows drawn and uncomprehending. “What?”

“With part of me and part of Noah, what if this is what you really want?”

Luke blinked, and shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“This morning,” Reid said, shifting to meet Luke’s gaze. “What we were talking about. What I said. My assiness.”

Luke smiled a little, breathed a small huff at that and grabbed Reid by the front of his shirt to pull him sitting down in front of Luke. Reid let him, allowed himself to be tugged down and landed on his butt with his knees pulled up in front of him, his arms folded across. Noah’s arms, and he stared at Noah’s hands, taking in all of the different edges and whorls of skin that he’d noticed last night on Luke.

“Okay, now, start over,” Luke instructed, his full attention on Reid now.

But Reid wasn’t prepared to repeat that shameful little bit of self-doubt he’d just explained, and shrugged instead, staring off over Luke’s shoulder at nothing in particular.

“You think that I’d, what, prefer you to look like Noah?” Luke wondered with raised, disbelieving eyebrows.

“It sounds really stupid when you say it out loud,” Reid mumbled, wanting to crawl into a hole.

“Yes, it does,” Luke agreed, giving Reid a light shove. “It’s stupid however you say it.”

Reid didn’t reply. He knew all of it had to be said, but desperately wanted the conversation to be over. He hated, more than almost anything, to think of himself as anything less than steadfast and certain, confident. He never knew what to do with himself when cracks disguised as vulnerability began to show.

“I don’t want to keep doing this,” Luke said softly, deadly serious.

“Doing what?” Though Reid knew.

“Having to convince you that I want you, that I love you, that I don’t want him anymore.”

“You don’t, I know all that,” Reid said, more or less truthfully.

“Obviously not, if we’re still fighting about Noah now, after a year. More than a year, really,” Luke reasoned. “I know everything kind of happened all at once, and I know that I was… hesitant, I guess, back then. When you and I first started…whatever. But honestly? My breakup with Noah and my relationship with you, they’re two separate things. It’s not like I’m - like I’m _settling_ for you or whatever you seem to think. I don’t _want_ to be with him, in any way.”

“Wow, you just said a mouthful,” Reid tried to laugh.

“Don’t deflect the conversation,” Luke replied.

“I know, alright?” Reid waved his hand, angry suddenly. “I know you don’t want to be with him, I _know_ you want to be with me, I know, okay?”

“Then don’t treat me like my past with him is something that I have to apologize for.”

“I’m not - ”

“You are,” Luke told him, and Reid so badly did not want him to be right. “It’s not fair to me, it’s not fair to either one of us. I know you don’t like him, I know you two will probably never get along, but I can’t take back what I had with him. I wouldn’t even if I could. And I don’t want to have to… to keep proving myself to you.”

“I know that,” Reid said, finally turning to stare back at Luke fully, wishing desperately that he could articulate his feelings better. “I really don’t like fighting with you like this.” It seemed about the only thing he _could_ lay out there for Luke to see.

“Then stop being a jerk every time you get nervous about something,” Luke said quietly, shoving Reid gently again. Reid took that as a good sign. Luke leaned forward and held Reid‘s arm, said, “I told you, you don’t have to feel insecure about him, or about me. I’ll love you if you look like you or you look like Noah or you look like a manatee or a grapefruit or a beach ball.”

“Oh lord,” Reid rolled his eyes and pushed Luke away easily, delighting in Luke‘s gentle laugh. “I’m in love with a disgustingly sappy sap.”

“Yup, you are,” Luke said proudly.

“Also, manatees are pretty cute.”

“They are,” Luke agreed and seemed to ponder that. “Maybe I’d love you even _more_ if you looked like one…”

“Right, like you’d really want to say goodbye to all of _this_ ,” Reid boasted, waving a hand over himself, then remembered himself belatedly and corrected, “Uh - _that,_ I mean,” nodding towards the closed office door.

Luke’s smile brightened and he nodded exaggeratedly, indulging Reid’s ego. He sobered a bit then, his smile easing back a touch.

“What?” Reid prompted, unsure if he really wanted to hear the reply.

“This,” Luke shrugged. “This is… it’s a little odd having this conversation with you like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I can make one more reference to my relationship with Noah?” Luke asked cautiously, eyeing Reid from beneath his lashes.

Reid motioned his okay with a wave of his hand.

“This, right here - if you want to know why Noah and I didn’t work, it’s because of this.”

“…Because he doesn’t look like a manatee?”

“No,” Luke laughed, which made Reid smile in turn. “We’d get angry with each other and we’d fight and then we’d break up, or I’d apologize but feel like crap or something. I didn’t always feel like I could talk to him the way I can with you. I mean, it was deeper than that, bigger issues than that, but. It’s kind of strange to hear your words coming from his mouth. A lot of times when we fought I didn’t really feel like we could talk things out the way I do with you.”

Reid had said a million times that he didn’t understand how Luke stayed with Noah as long as he did, so he refrained from pointing out yet again that Noah just wasn’t good enough for Luke, and instead nodded and thought about grasping Luke’s hand.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah,” Luke said, then seemed to consider. “Weren’t you going to ask me something last night?”

“Before your mom interrupted and fawned all over Noah.”

“She’ll fawn all over you too someday,” Luke assured him, and Reid gave him a look, but didn’t press the subject.

“Why haven’t you told me that you’ve been emailing with Noah?”

Luke stiffened a bit, shoulders raising with a tense hedge, but he smiled it off as if it was nothing, which was a little annoying.

“He told you that, huh?”

“Threw it in my face is more like it,” Reid grumbled, hands tightening against his knees.

“It’s no big deal,” Luke said with a flippant shrug, then, sobering and serious, “Reid, you’re not worried about _that_ are you? Is that why you‘re so tense about Noah?” He reached over to squeeze Reid’s hand, and Reid stared at the hand that laid on top of his own.

“Well, no, actually it’s mostly my being stuck inside of my boyfriend’s ex’s body that’s got me so tense,” he said slowly, and Luke nodded, but waved his hand as if to say _yes, but?_ “But I do have to admit that I was a bit… confused when Noah said that.”

“Reid, c’mon, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know that,” Reid said, and he did. Luke looked confused, as if expecting more of a fight or a freak out from Reid, but Reid continued, “I know _you,_ Luke. You’re right,” he conceded finally as he shifted uncomfortably on the floor, suddenly feeling as though the space around them was too tight. “Being around Noah, at times, makes me feel a tad… disquieted.”

Reid expected Luke to roll his eyes or giggle at him or in some other way tease him for such a stupid, illogical feeling. But Luke continued staring seriously, his eyes large and soulful, and Reid continued.

“But I know you,” Reid said again. “And I know him and I know us and I know that there’s nothing going on there. Much as Mr. Mayer might want there to be.”

Luke shook his head, said, “No, no, he doesn’t still - ”

“He really does, Luke. But that’s really neither here nor there. Noah’s issues are his own. What I don’t understand is – I asked you, Luke, I asked you pretty recently if you’d talked to Noah lately.”

“I know.”

“And you said no.”

“Well what you actually asked was, had I heard from Noah lately.”

“Oh geeze, I’m sorry,” Reid grumbled, annoyed. “Should I have been more specific?”

“And the answer’s still the same,” Luke went on. “I’ve emailed him a few times. I still want he and I to be able to be friends. He’s close to my family. It’s hard to just cut him out of my life. I want him not to hate me. I want him to know that I don’t hate him.”

“Well if he hates you, he’s even more of a jackass than I realized.”

“But he’s never emailed me or called me back,” Luke went on. “So, no, Reid, I haven’t heard from him lately.”

“Why couldn’t you just tell me that instead of lying to me?”

“I didn’t lie,” Luke defended. “I just didn’t tell you that I’d emailed him.”

“Lie of omission, then.”

Luke shrugged and gazed down at his hands, then turned to look back up at Reid. “Because he makes you uncomfortable; even mentioning him seems to make you uncomfortable. I knew it would bother you to hear about him.”

“I was the one who asked,” Reid pointed out.

“Yeah, in that way that means you don’t actually want to hear the answer,” and admittedly, Luke did have a point there.

“You still should’ve mentioned it.”

“I didn’t want to annoy you,” Luke admitted, and it hurt a little to think that Luke didn’t want to share something with him out of fear, though he knew that fear was created by someone else.

“I’m more annoyed that you lied - half-lied - about it,” Reid told him, wanting again to take Luke’s hand. He held himself back, still a bit uneasy about the implications of Luke showing him affection while Reid wore Noah’s body.

Luke nodded quietly, then sighed, “You’re right. I shouldn’t’ve done that. I’m sorry I wasn’t totally honest. I just don’t really know how to talk about Noah or mention him to you without it bothering you.”

“Okay, new rule,” Reid declared, deciding that he was done with this whole Noah business and ready to move on. “In light of our previous conversation, how about I stop getting pissy at any mere mention of Mr. Mayer, and from now on we have a policy of full disclosure on the matter of contact with any exes.”

Luke grinned dopily and nodded, extended his hand to shake on it. “Deal.”

The afternoon faded quickly into evening, and Reid spent it instructing Luke on proper book shelving and the importance of authorial alphabetical order, ignoring Luke’s exaggerated eye rolls as he went. Noah ordered a pizza for dinner, which Reid paid for, declaring them even now for Noah’s assistance, and the three of them ate in uncomfortable relative silence in the living room. Several boxes had been cleared away over the course of that day and the previous one, however, so at least there was that.

The discussion of sleeping arrangements was also a bit of an awkward one, as they still had reached no conclusion about the whole body-swapping business, and who knew where they would each be when they woke?

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Luke said, ever the optimist. “I’m sure things’ll go back to normal by tomorrow. They’ve got to, right?”

Reid refrained from pointing out the complete lack of base for that assertion. And also the fact that if they went to sleep with Noah on the couch and Luke and Reid in their bed, and woke up to everything being back to normal, Luke would be in bed with Noah and Reid would be out on the couch, and _that_ was just not alright, their last conversation about Noah be damned.

So Noah spent the night again on the couch, warning them as he got settled down that, “I can’t spend the rest of my life out here, guys. We’re gonna have to figure this out soon, I really have to get back to L.A.”

And Luke assured him that they would and bade him goodnight as Reid pulled him by the hem of his shirt into their room, shutting the door behind them.

They fell into bed on their respective sides and gazed across the space in between them, Reid at Luke, Luke at Noah’s face. Luke’s hand rest curled up next to his face; Reid watched his fingers twitch and imagined that Luke was struggling not to reach out and touch him. Reid didn’t say anything, didn’t invite him to do so and didn’t offer anything of his own, though two days of stilted, uncomfortable touches shared sparingly between them was starting to get him and he was growing desperate just to stroke his hands over Luke and be touched and held in return.

Luke’s eyes drooped closed after a while, and when his breathing began to even out, calm and steady, Reid let himself do the same.


	3. DAY THREE

**DAY THREE**

“Not again,” was the first thing Reid heard before he was quite awake, the words cutting their way into his dream and wiping it away before Reid would even grasp onto what it was. He swallowed and smacked his lips before blinking his eyes open slowly. Noah was lying in bed there before his eyes, so he closed them again sleepily and made no effort to rouse his mind.

The bed moved under him, shuddering a bit as the weight around him shifted, so Reid opened his eyes again to see… whoever it was - his muddled mind finally began to catch up with him but he didn’t have quite the strength yet to think about who could be who now in whose body - stumble quickly out of the room, leaving the door open.

“Luke?” Reid called out, then immediately slapped a hand to his mouth upon hearing the voice that echoed from one room to the next.

He ran a hand through his hair, tugged down bangs that hadn’t been there yesterday to stare cross-eyed at the blond strands. “Okay,” he sighed to himself.

Someone walked in the room, and Reid turned to look up at himself. Or his body, at least. Things like this were far too confusing for early mornings.

“So,” whoever it was said in his voice. “You’re me then?”

“Luke?” Reid asked and the other man nodded, giving him a wide-eyed grimace. “And Noah’s back to himself?“ Another nod. “Well. I’m in your body and you’re in mine. This is an improvement over yesterday, I guess. Then again, I did just wake up next to Noah for the third time in as many days, which is getting pretty tiresome.”

He made space for Luke on the bed and Luke came over to lay down next to him, both of them on their backs looking up at the ceiling. Reid folded his arms - Luke’s arms - behind his head, and Luke let his hands - Reid’s hands - rest over his chest.

“So,” Luke sighed. “What now?”

Reid considered this for a few minutes, pondering things from all sides, and eventually settled on, “Waffles?”

Luke turned his head to look at him curiously.

“I’m hungry,” Reid shrugged. “I had a craving the other day that still hasn’t been satisfied. I’m not sure what else we can do about this - ” he waved his arm between them “ - at the moment - maybe tomorrow we’ll all go back to normal? - So I say we get up, get dressed, get our new waffle iron out and make some food.”

Luke laughed hard enough that he had to roll over and bury his face in the bedding, which was something Reid never thought he’d see his own body do - laugh so hard he was nearly crying. It was very intriguing.

So they got up and got dressed and got the waffle iron out of the box Luke’s mother had packed it into for them. Noah exuded happiness at his fortune and Reid wanted to slap the good mood right off of his face, but he loved his boyfriend more than he hated Noah, so he offered Noah some waffles instead.

“Actually, I think I’m going to see about a flight back,” Noah replied, which made Luke drop a pan clattering on the kitchen floor.

“But what about tomorrow?” Luke said, Reid’s voice sounding distressed in a pitch that it had never had before. “What if we all switch around again tomorrow and me or Reid wakes up in California and you’re back here?”

Which seemed to be a possibility that Noah hadn’t considered, judging by the frown that crossed his face. Or if he had considered it, he hadn’t given it much weight.

“I don’t - ”

“You’re staying here,” Reid told him, and allowed him no further argument, turning to go diving through a large box of food where he believed the Bisquik to be hiding.

Noah deflated after that, which didn’t please Reid as much as if should have, as Reid really did want the kid to go away as much as Noah wanted to get away. Instead, they ate waffles together at the kitchen counter, Reid chuckling as Luke burned his finger - “Be careful with my hands,” he chided Luke - and Luke intentionally overcooking Reid’s waffle because he knew that Reid liked them a little on the crispy side. Noah remained quiet through most of the meal, and Reid felt a tough of guilt, considering their conversation in the car the previous day, but not enough to try and make insincere small talk.

Later, Luke sat on the stool in the office with his laptop on the desk in front of him while Reid stood beside him and inspected pieces of Luke’s body that he knew intimately but had never come to know quite _this_ intimately.

“There’s someone over in Evanston we could go talk to,” Luke commented absently as he scrolled down an open internet page. Reid didn’t pay him much attention, too wrapped up in gazing down at Luke’s transplant scar from this new angle. “And a bunch in Chicago, although at least half of those must be fake…”

“Uh, ‘half,’ Luke?” Reid said, looking up momentarily to glare dubiously at his boyfriend. “That would imply that the other half are, in fact, _actually_ psychic.”

“It was your suggestion,” Luke reminded him without looking up from the computer screen. “And I’m not really seeing any other ideas.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Reid mumbled and looked back down at the scar winding it’s way along Luke’s abdomen and side. Hair fell into his eyes and he shoved it away as he trailed his fingers along the pale skin, lighter than the surrounding flesh and indented just a fraction from where it should have been. He traced around the edges of the scar for a moment and then yelped, his whole body jumping on instinct when he touched the sensitive area directly.

“What?” Luke turned to look at him curiously.

“Wow,” Reid said, touching the scar again directly and jumping slightly again. “It feels really weird.”

“Stop touching it, then,” Luke grumbled, and turned back to the computer.

“No, it’s not really bad weird, it’s just…”

“I know what it feels like, Reid.”

“I don’t have any scars,” Reid commented, ignoring Luke’s annoyed tone. “I’ve performed hundreds of surgeries and made all kinds of scars on other people.” He continued to stare down at Luke’s side with a vague sense of wonder. “Never knew what they actually felt like, you know, after the fact.”

Luke huffed a small laugh at that and shook his head. “You’re so weird sometimes,” he said affectionately. Or at least, as far as Reid could tell listening to that tone in his own voice.

“Why is that weird?” Reid asked, genuinely perplexed.

Luke turned to look up at Reid, smiling his own brand of good humored smile. “Because of all the things in this situation to become fixated on and totally fascinated by, my surgery scar? Really?”

Reid shrugged. “I already know most every other part of you,” he replied easily, tossing his head a bit to get the hair out of his eyes again. Luke turned back to the computer screen and Reid watched him for a moment, pensive. “You, however, seem to be taking this all remarkably in stride.”

Luke shrugged, didn’t turn back around, and continued reading something on the computer screen. “I already know most every part of you too. And this isn’t quite as disconcerting as you and Noah being in each other’s bodies.”

“That I’ll agree with,” Reid said, then sighed loudly when Luke’s hair fell yet again in front of his eyes, distorting his vision. “How can you stand all this _hair_?” he said, annoyed, tugging at the bangs until his scalp hurt.

“That’s why god invented hair gel,” Luke replied easily as he copied down a phone number into a notebook beside the computer.

“Do you have any?” Reid asked slowly, well aware that Luke went through gallons of the stuff on a weekly basis (though he’d never complain; he loved Luke’s hair).

Luke grinned lightly and didn’t reply, but got up to lead the way to their bedroom, where he dragged out a box labeled MISC. HAIR STUFF. It was a pretty big box, and Reid was surprised find it actually packed full of hair gel and spray and highlighting products and combs and the like.

Reid looked at him sidelong and raised his eyebrows.

“I have good hair,” Luke shrugged. “I like to take care of it. Don’t tell me you’ve never noticed.”

“I’ve noticed your good hair,” Reid said, glancing back down at the box. “I just never realized how much work it took to make it look good.”

Luke smacked him on the arm, then reached in the box to fish out a bottle of green gel. He squeezed some onto his fingers and rubbed them together, nodding at Reid to, “C’mere.”

Reid did as he was told and was treated to Luke running his gelled hands through his hair, and it was lovely. Luke massaged and smoothed, danced his fingertips over Reid’s scalp and caused Reid’s eyes droop in luxurious pleasure, his skin tingling happily as Luke touched and stroked his head. It was jarring to see his own face this close up as Luke played with his hair, but the intense look of concentration on that face was so purely Luke that Reid’s mind could make the jump fairly easy.

Luke gathered up the hair that had been annoying Reid, the bangs and the whisps on the side of his face, brushed them out of the way and back and up and then leaned back a bit to survey his work. Reid’s body was humming happily, his stomach building that familiar coiling feeling as he gazed at - well, himself, but Luke’s pleased expression, Luke’s intense gaze, and it had been days and he _missed_ Luke even though they’d been together mostly the whole time and suddenly Reid surged forward almost without conscious intent to do so and planted his mouth against Luke’s, his hands flying to the sides of Luke’s face to keep him in place despite the noise of surprise that Luke made.

They stumbled, Reid forward, Luke back, until Luke’s back hit a wall with an “Oomph” from Luke, and Reid just kissed him harder, stroking his tongue over Luke’s palate, trying not to think about how it was actually his, and did this mean that he was actually kissing himself? He brushed the thought from his mind quickly and focused entirely on trying to force more sounds of pleasure from Luke.

Too bizarre to go down on himself, Reid decided, although it would make for a fabulous Penthouse letter, so instead they traded rushed hand jobs and Reid sucked a bruise into the skin beneath his jaw, chuckling when Luke drawled out, “Careful, your patients are going to see that, Dr. Oliver.” Clothes were brushed out of the way, too rushed to pull them all the way off, and within minutes they were both coming, Reid just after Luke and Luke with a contented sigh. Reid rest his temple against Luke’s for a moment before giving him a quick kiss on the side of his head and then straightening up to pull him over to the bed.

He kicked the bedroom door shut, not a care for where Noah might be but not quite cruel enough that he’d want the kid to see them like this. Luke stretched out on the bed and Reid pulled off his shirt, stripped down to his boxers, then leaned over the bed to help Luke do the same.

Reid crawled up to the head of the bed then too and lay on his back, pulling Luke in to rest against him, and Luke, inexplicably, began laughing again in the giddy, manic way he had the morning before.

“What is so damn funny?” Reid asked him, and Luke buried his face into the crook of Reid’s arm.

“Nothing, I don’t know,” Luke laughed. “This. It’s so - ”

“Weird, yeah, we’ve covered that already a few dozen times.”

“ _So_ weird.” Luke stroked Reid’s chest, his fingers dancing briefly over a nipple. “Would you giving me a hand job be considered masturbation, do you think?” He looked up at Reid, eye’s nearly sparkling with his mirth. Reid couldn’t help laughing in reply.

“It’s gotta be considered some kind of self-loving, I think,” he replied, hugging Luke to him a little tighter. “No way will I blow you, though. Sorry.”

“Yeah, that crossed my mind too,” Luke said, which for some reason made him giggle even harder. “Also, I can’t believe that in three days no one’s made the obligatory _I’m in your body_ sex joke. I’d have thought that’d be a given.”

“Oh, done a lot of pondering on body-swapping in the past, have you?” Reid tugged gently at the hair on Luke’s head and Luke shrugged, laughed lightly.

“‘Course not. But the number of times one of us has said, ’I’m in Reid’s body,’ ’Luke’s _inside_ my body,’ etcetera etcetera, I can’t believe we’ve missed so many opportunities.”

“You’re right,” Reid said, heavily sarcastic. “We’ve been far too preoccupied with wondering why this is happening to pay the immature jokes that should be made enough mind, haven’t we?”

“Just a bit,” Luke agreed with a cheeky sort of smile that Reid never donned himself.

“It’s sort of strange, touching you like this, sort of like…” Reid played with his own hair thoughtfully, twirling the short strands between his fingers and feeling a bit narcissistic. “Like having sex with a brand new person, except not. Normally I know everywhere to touch you, all your little spots that make you shiver or breathe differently or make a noise I like. Like this, though… I mean, I know what I like, I know what feels good, but I never really keep as much track of all those little spots on myself as I do on you.”

He’d blame that sappy edge on the orgasm, but Luke’s soft, thoughtful smile was worth it.

“Here,” Luke said softly, taking Reid’s hand and pressing it against himself, holding it there as he pulled Reid’s fingers up to touch the underside of his chin. “You like to be kissed here,” he told Reid, keeping hold of Reid’s fingers. “And you always squirm when I graze my teeth over the skin.”

Reid stared at him a moment, then leaned over to do as Luke had explained, running the edges of his teeth over Luke’s chin. His chin. Something; the pronouns were getting way too confusing.

Luke sighed softly, happily. “And you shiver whenever I brush my hands down your sides, just under your arms, like this,” and he showed Reid, stroking their joined hands down his side. True to his word, Luke’s muscles jumped as Reid’s hand tickled against his ribcage, and Luke smiled.

“You’ll never admit it in a million years,” Luke continued, moving Reid’s hand to the crux of his shoulder, where arm met chest. “But I know you love it when I - oh!” He jumped a bit when Reid dug his fingers into the skin there. “That _does_ feel good.” He sighed happily.

Luke moved their hands to his collarbone, tiptoeing Reid’s fingers over the ridge of bone. Reid’s eyes began to glaze over as he watched his own body manipulated for Luke’s pleasure, unsure why exactly it was turning him on so much, but desperate to see more.

“You like to be bitten here,” Luke breathed heavily, and Reid sat up to do so, forcing Luke to do the same. Luke shuffled over to straddle Reid’s lap as Reid leaned forward and scraped his teeth against Luke’s clavicle, circling his arms around Luke’s waist to catch the full body shudder that followed.

“Yeah,” Luke whispered. “Like that.”

Reid bit him there again, then dragged his tongue over the same spot. Luke pressed his erection against Reid’s abdomen and let his head fall against Reid’s shoulder, breathing warmly into Reid’s ear, which made Reid shiver delightedly.

“You love down here,” Luke breathed against Reid’s neck as he traced Reid’s fingers down and over to the inside of Luke’s knee. “You always breathe harder when I touch you here,” and true to his word, Luke’s breath picked up speed and Reid tickled the spot lightly. He brushed his fingers lightly at first over the skin there, then pressed a bit harder and sucked Luke’s earlobe into his mouth at the same time. Luke’s low groan in response was perfect.

Luke released Reid’s hand and circled his arms around Reid’s neck, drawing his head in to press their mouths together, his tongue drawn out in the second before Reid’s eyes fell shut and their mouths met, the sight of which made Reid groan. The game abandoned, Reid focused on little more than simply touching Luke _everywhere_ , running his hands from Luke’s neck down his back, to dig fingers into his ass, to stroke around to his stomach and up his chest. Luke fisted hands in his hair and Reid had to wonder, fleetingly, if Luke found it strange to have so much hair, to have his _own_ hair, to play with.

All thoughts of who was in what body escaped him when Luke shoved first his boxers and then Reid’s down their thighs, out of the way, and pressed himself more fully against Reid, bringing their erections together and sending a thrill up Reid’s spine. He pressed against Luke’s back, trying to push Luke into him even more, and then moved down to grab Luke by the backside and roll Luke’s hips into him.

Luke flit his tongue over Reid’s upper lip and scooted his hips up, wedging one hand in between them to skate fingers over both of their cocks.

They moved against each other, Luke against Reid and Reid against Luke and Luke touching them both and both of them panting into each other’s mouths and he was touching Luke but also somehow touching himself and Luke knew every part of him and that should have been frightening, should have been terrifying in it’s domesticity and finality and _this could be it for the rest of my life, someone who knows me completely inside and out_ except that it was perfect, exquisite, and Reid came suddenly with a shout, tearing his mouth away from Luke’s to drink in the air around them and the scent of the two of them mixed together.

Reid breathed against Luke’s cheek, rest his head there as Luke continued to move his body against Reid, and Reid shifted just a bit to whisper “Come on, Luke,” and flit his tongue over Luke’s jaw and that was it, Luke was coming against Reid’s stomach.

They laughed for a bit, afterwards as they lay back against the pillows, at nothing in particular, and Reid felt again like a sap, but he was too content to care. They lay on their sides facing each other, one of Luke’s legs thrown lazily over Reid’s hip and Reid’s arm strewn across Luke’s shoulder, and far too comfortable to ever leave this bed again.

“Could use a nap,” Reid said softly, yawning for effect.

“It’s the middle of the day,” Luke reminded him with a gentle smile, lips tugging back idly. “We just got up a couple hours ago.”

Reid shrugged, nonchalant, and leaned forward to kiss him, tugging gently on Luke’s lip with his teeth.

“I love you,” Reid said for no reason at all.

Luke’s smile was blinding, even on Reid’s face. “Love you too,” he said, and if Reid focused his gaze on Luke’s eyes, he could see the entirety of Luke in there, rather than his own skin.

They drifted lazily in and out of awareness, breathing smoothly against one another and settling their own personal spaces into one big space surrounding them both. Reid had said it days before, when he’d thought Luke was asleep and couldn’t hear him, that he’d never wanted to spend his life with anyone else before, and it was the truth. He’d never even really liked sleeping in the same bed as someone else before Luke, too fixated on his own need for space and to spread out and too rigid to really allow himself to relax and fall asleep with another person there with him. He had no idea what had changed with Luke, but didn’t care to search for an explanation - another first for him.

“I have a question,” Luke said after a while of languid dozing. Reid opened his eyes halfway and Luke pulled his head back a bit, adjusting himself to look at Reid more fully. “This is going to sound… Well, I know it’s a dumb question to ask, especially… never mind, forget it.”

“No, what?” Reid asked, opening his eyes all the way now to give Luke his full attention.

“You… you’re in this for the long haul, right?” Luke asked him carefully. “Like… I mean I’m not asking for a big declaration or a ring or something stupid like that, but you’re… you and me, this is kind of it, right?”

Reid would later blame his sleepiness for replying, “Luke, I’d marry you right now if it was legal and we didn’t have to leave this bed.” If Luke had asked the same question three days ago, Reid probably would’ve made a joke or picked a fight or distracted himself with something that suddenly required his immediate attention and deflected the question, tried to make Luke forget he’d ever pondered _long haul_ , because who could ever think in those terms? But his response came on impulse, surprising even himself with its honesty.

Luke smiled awkwardly, which wasn’t what Reid was going for, and he could feel his forehead crease as he stared back at Luke, confused.

“Why didn’t you want to buy a house with me?” Luke’s question was quiet but full, unwavering, as if daring Reid to make a joke or twist it around.

Reid wasn’t quite prepared for that and didn’t have a clue how to answer. Because at this stage in their relationship renting was a more stable and logical decision than buying was the most reasonable explanation, the first one that came to mind, and he said as much to Luke.

“You just said that we’re pretty much committed to each other, though,” Luke pointed out without sounding distraught or upset as Reid had half-expected him to be.

“But you never know,” Reid replied, as if that was really an answer. “You never know what’s going to happen somewhere down the line.”

“If we’re agreed that we’re together, like, _together_ , that this isn’t just a casual relationship, then what’s the big deal about making a big commitment?” Luke challenged, his voice firm.

“Because you _never know_ , Luke,” Reid said again, a little impatient.

“What does that even mean?” Luke asked, pulling himself further back.

“I don’t know,” Reid said, because he didn’t, really. “We moved in together, isn’t that a big enough commitment for now?”

Luke seemed pensive for a moment, tiling his head as he considered Reid, then said, “Are you afraid of commitment?”

“Uh, have you met me?” Reid replied, half a smile tugging at him and only sort of joking.

“Seriously, though,” Luke didn’t let him off the hook. “You say all the right words and I know how you feel about me and we’ve talked again and again just in the last few days about how I feel about you. What’re you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Reid said even though he knew that wasn’t expressly true.

“Liar,” Luke shot back without any heat.

Reid wanted to pick a fight. He wanted to say something biting, say _well why don’t you just tell me how I feel then?_ and push Luke into just dropping the whole stupid subject. But he took a deep breath and steadied himself, reminded himself that he didn’t need to make this into a fight, and fun as it was to argue with Luke sometimes, it wasn’t so great when he hurt Luke.

“Look,” he sighed, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see Luke watching him. “We’ve already been over my… _insecurities_ , if you want to call it that, several in the past couple of days. You know I haven’t done a lot of this, the serious relationship stuff.”

He rambled off into silence, his words feeling clunky and disjointed, unsure what he wanted to say. What was it about Luke, he wondered, that always had him so flustered and lost for coherent thought?

“Trust me, Luke, trust me when I say that I’ve never done this before with anyone. This kind of commitment. I’ve never even wanted to.” Reid swallowed, swallowed down his fear and tried to be the kind of honest that Luke wanted of him when it came to these kinds of serious relationship talks. “Moving in together…” _It’s a big risk,_ he wanted to say, _and what if it doesn’t work out for us?_ But that would’ve been a big mistake, and thank god he realized before he said it. He opened his eyes. “It’s already something huge, isn’t it? I know you were practically married before, but I’m… some of these things I need to take one step at a time. Why do we need to go in on house together already?”

Luke breathed in deeply through his nose, a harsh sound in the quiet of the room though not inherently angry. “Okay,” he said, which Reid hadn’t expected.

“Okay?”

Luke shrugged, beamed a graceful smile. “Okay. You’re right, this is already taking a big step and we don’t need to rush into something even bigger just yet. Sorry to push you on this.”

“Have you been thinking about this all this time?” Reid asked, thinking back to their conversation weeks ago.

“I was convinced it was me,” he confessed, smacking a hand against his forehead with a rueful smile. “I thought you just didn’t want to buy a house with _me_.”

“Idiot,” Reid teased him gently. “You need to tell me these things.”

“What things?”

“When I’m, you know, hurting your feelings.”

Luke’s brow furrowed, an adorable expression in Reid’s features. Reid took another deep breath and swore that after this he wouldn’t talk about his emotions for a long, long time.

“I’m really not crazy about all this self-examination, so let’s not make this a habit, okay?” he began. “I don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to relationships, I haven’t really done it that often, so - though I am _loathe_ to admit that I may be just a touch sub par in some areas - I don’t always know exactly what the right thing to do or right thing to say is. Sometimes I might need you to tell me when I upset you. Rare an occasion as that may be.”

And with that, he wanted to crawl into a hole and die of shame.

“Okay, new rule,” Luke decided. “I tell you when you’re being a - ” Reid glared at him, and Luke amended that to, “When you’re being a little _insensitive_ , and you let me know if I’m pushing for too much too fast.”

“Agreed,” Reid said, punctuating it with a firm nod and a stroke of his hand over Luke’s cheek. He wished that he could really see Luke, rather than the shades of him that came through in Reid’s body, but at the moment it really wasn’t so bad.

“Now,” Luke said as he shifted and settled against the bed so that he could press himself against Reid once more. “Are we just going to stay in this bed all day?”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

“What about Noah?”

“What about him?” Reid said with a shrug. “He can find his own bed partner to share with.”

So they drifted again, traded kisses and a few touches here and there, nothing to get them going again but enough to relax comfortably into the cushions and reassure one another that they were good, they were both still there and both still in it, wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Luke’s head rest against Reid’s shoulder and Reid could feel the whisper of eyelashes brushing his skin as Luke drifted off, fighting at first to keep his eyes open but eventually coming to a close. Reid carded his fingers through the hair on Luke’s head and tried not to wish too hard for things to be as they should when they awoke.

No such luck, Reid realized upon waking. He’d never have expected to think this, but he was getting rather tired of staring at himself.

“Ugh,” Luke groaned articulately as he blinked his eyes open to find them both still unchanged. “Not that it’s all that bad looking like you or anything, but I’m getting a little tired of this.”

“Yup,” Reid sighed.

They got up and showered - Reid using the opportunity to take stock of his body from all angles - and dressed and found Noah gone, a note left again saying he’d gone for a walk, though Reid didn’t really much care.

“At least you won’t need an excuse to bring me along if you need to go to the hospital,” Luke joked without much enthusiasm.

“I guess you couldn’t play a worse me than Noah did,” Reid agreed, but didn’t elaborate on his irritation the previous day. “What time is it?”

“Late,” Luke answered.

“Okay, then. Dinner?”

“Do you ever think of anything besides food?”

“Luke, we’ve just spent the better part of three days talking about my _feelings_.” He spat the word ’feelings’ as if it was dirty. “I think we can safely say that I do think about things other than food. Occasionally. But,” he stated with a declarative clap of his hands. “Solving the riddles of spontaneous body-switching can’t be done on an empty stomach, so, dinner?”

“Fine, fine,” Luke smiled, rolling his eyes and nodding.

Before they could reach the door to head out in search of a restaurant, however, both were startled by a knock and looked at each other nervously.

“Could just be someone delivering something,” Luke suggested.

“Right, because that’s just how our luck has gone these past few days.”

Reid was correct, it turned out, as they were greeted by Holden, Ethan, and Natalie upon opening the front door.

“Hey, buddy!” Luke seemed to forget himself and bent down to pick Ethan up. Ethan seemed happy enough, but Natalie and Holden looked on curiously, seeing Reid, who had never been the warm and burstingly friendly type, holding Luke’s brother against his side and ruffling his hair happily.

“Um. Reid?” Reid said slowly, staring hard at Luke. Luke froze, his smile quickly escaping, and then promptly returned Ethan to his feet.

Holden looked at them pretty much the way Lily had the other day, as if their heads had exploded, and Reid struggled to imitate Luke’s generally sunny demeanor.

“Hi!” he exclaimed, maybe just a little too forcefully. Natalie stifled a giggle behind her hands.

“Are we interrupting something?” Holden asked, all serious business.

Oh. Yikes, Reid realized, Holden thought he’d caught them in the middle of - well, better that than the truth, he figured, so he tried to look embarrassed and shuffled his feet a bit.

“No, uh, _Dad_ ,” he said awkwardly. “’Course not.”

“Nothing at all,” Luke picked up.

“We can come back,” Holden said as he put a hand on top of Ethan’s head, while Ethan began tugging at Reid’s pant leg.

“We brought pie!” Ethan told Reid proudly, and nearly dropped the plate in his hands on Reid’s feet.

“You did?” Reid didn’t have to fake his enthusiasm at that.

“Your grandmother sent some food over,” Holden told him, holding up a bag to demonstrate. “The kids wanted to see your new place. But we can come back later.”

Ethan seemed unhappy at that, twisting into a whine that made Reid cringe, even in its simplicity - he hated when kids whined - but Natalie stayed quiet throughout, staring Reid down with a look in her eyes far to wise for her years, as if she knew exactly what was going on.

“Ethan, we should get going,” Holden told his youngest, but Ethan wasn’t easily deterred.

“But I want Luke to come!” Which annoyed the hell out of Reid, but Luke was so easily wrapped around his siblings’ fingers, and when Reid glanced over he could see Luke’s unmasked disappointment. Ethan turned to Reid with a quivering lip. “I miss you living at home with us.” Even though it had only been three days. Kids were so illogical.

Reid figured that, as he was playing the role of Luke today, he should probably say something to comfort “his brother,” calm him down or something, and tried to think of any of the times he’d watched Luke interact with his brother and sisters.

Nothing came to mind, however, except, “Um, you want a piece of pie?” and a stiff pat to Ethan’s head.

Luke, thankfully, took over, and crouched down so he was at Ethan’s eyelevel. “How about we promise to come by tomorrow, take you guys out to do something fun, just us, okay?”

Reid shifted uncomfortably, glancing at Holden to catch his curiously furrowed brow.

“Okay,” Ethan seemed won over by that, and Luke forgot himself again with a smile and pulled Ethan in to hug him.

The three of them left shortly after that, with a knowing smile and a wave goodbye from Natalie, and Reid turned to Luke.

“You realize this means that I’m going to have to be all warm and cuddly with him from now on, right?” Reid glared. “When we go back to our own bodies, he’s going to be really confused if I’m not all nice and huggy after this.”

“You can win him over with pie,” Luke laughed at him.

“Shut up.”

“No, really though,” Luke continued chuckling as Reid turned to walk away from him. “Had you ever even _seen_ a child before you met them?”

“I hate you,” Reid said in a sing-song voice as he searched through a box for a phonebook.

“Because you seem to get worse at it every time you talk to them.”

“Just for that, I’m not buying you dinner.” He flipped through the yellow pages, looking for Chinese food listings.

“Alright, how ‘bout I buy _you_ dinner, then,” Luke said, taking the book from Reid’s hands.

“If that’s the _least_ you can do,” Reid mumbled for dramatic effect.

Noah turned up just as the food did, sheepishly asking for some fried rice to share, and Reid passed him the box silently. Dinner became, then, another quiet, awkward sort of affair, with everyone doing their best, it seemed, not to step on anyone else’s toes.

“My mom wants you to come by, say hi while you’re in town,” Luke told Noah. “I didn’t mention how long you’d be here. Since I wasn’t really sure. Do you… know how long you’re going to stay?”

“I guess that depends on what happens tomorrow,” Noah replied, tilting his head a bit. “Although whatever happens, whoever’s body I wake up in tomorrow - ”

Reid’s mind jumped back to Luke’s giggling earlier that morning, and he couldn’t stop the snicker that escaped him.

Noah shot him a glare, then continued, “Whoever’s body I wake up in tomorrow, I really need to get back. I have a lot of stuff going on back in L.A. People wondering where I am.”

And there was something about the way he said ‘people,’ that caught Reid’s attention, and by his narrowed eyes, Luke’s as well. Luke lowered the fork that had been poised at his mouth and looked Noah up and down.

“Are you… are you _seeing_ someone?” Luke asked like a detective working out a grand mystery.

Noah dropped his chopsticks and immediately went red. “What?”

“You totally are, aren’t you?” Luke broke into a grin. “What’s his name?”

“It’s nothing serious,” Noah shook his head, looking into his rice.

“So what that’s great Noah why didn’t you tell me?” Luke said all in a rush of mashed up sentences, his excitement bubbling over.

Noah shrugged, looked like he wanted to run and hide, which Reid would have made fun of except that he could empathize a bit.

“It’s not that big a deal,” Noah said, but Luke disagreed, of course.

“How long have you been dating?”

“A few weeks,” Noah replied. “Almost a month, I guess.”

Reid wanted to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing confessing his lingering desire for Reid’s boyfriend while he had someone waiting for him back in L.A., and his fingers tightened on his fork. He bit back the urge, reminded himself that Noah’s business was his business and he couldn’t touch Reid and Luke.

“That’s great, Noah,” Luke said, warm and genuine, happy for his friend.

“That’s nice of you to say,” Noah said wryly. “Although kind of freaking me out coming from Reid’s mouth.”

“You and me both,” Reid agreed.

Luke looked like he wanted to throw his dumplings at them, but managed to refrain with a glower and, remarkably, some of the tension drained from the room. Not all of it - Reid wasn’t sure he’d ever really be comfortable in Noah’s presence, or that he’d ever really come to _like_ the kid or that they’d be friends the way that Luke secretly, Reid knew, wished that they could. Noah would probably always be to Reid that whiny little shit who stomped all over Luke and made Luke so doubtful of himself; no amount of peaceful takeout dinners could change that view of him for Reid.

But at least Reid knew from this that they could have a peaceful meal together; that he and Noah could bond, however minutely, over needling Luke; that if Noah continued to pop up in their lives as the years went on, as Reid was coming to believe now that he would, they could at least get through it civilly and without any broken bones or black eyes. So that was a victory all in itself, he figured.

“We slept through most of the day and have barely made a dent in unpacking,” was not a good enough reason to Luke’s mind, apparently, not to lounge around in bed for the rest of the evening, so they left Noah hunkered down on the couch once again and made it an early night on the end of a very lazy day, and Reid didn’t get a whole lot of those, so he supposed that it was alright.

It helped to have Luke settled against him, reading a book of overly pretentious romantic poetry and jotting notes in the margins while Reid flipped through a paper on a recent study concerning the long term effects of concussions on professional athletes. He was warm and comfortable and Luke was with him and, provided this body-switching nonsense ended soon, they could be falling asleep together and waking up together like this every day. This could turn out to be a pretty good life, he mused, all things like ridiculous body-switching and annoying ex-boyfriends considered.

Reid started to drift off around the middle of a chapter on the rate of brain deterioration in boxers - he’d always hated boxing - and switched off the lamp next to him without bothering to put the paper away, roused only for a moment when Luke began snoring against Reid’s shoulder. Luke had never snored before, and Reid had a fleeting fear that perhaps he, himself was a snorer. Luke had never mentioned it before, but the noise had to be characteristic of Reid’s body rather than Luke’s personality… and at some point during his pondering he drifted back off into sleep.


	4. DAY FOUR

**DAY FOUR - the end -**

Reid woke somewhere in the very early morning with the sky outside their bedroom window glowing as it did just before dawn broke, and darkness still thick and inky around them. He sighed and pressed his face against Luke’s shoulder, breathing in Luke‘s familiar smell, unsure why he was awake. His hands ran absently over Luke’s stomach and then up under Luke’s t-shirt to find his heartbeat, thrumming away calmly beneath his chest, and Reid swallowed thickly in his dazed, half-asleep haze, smacking his lips and shifting around to get comfortable again. His hand stroked down Luke’s side and skittered to a stop at the feel of Luke’s scar, exactly where it should be, and Reid’s eyes opened fully, totally awake now as realization slammed into him.

He didn’t bother switching on the light, but pushed himself up on his elbows in order to stare down at Luke - Luke’s slightly too long blond hair and Luke’s mouth slack from sleep and Luke’s ears and Luke’s nose and Luke’s fingers resting against Luke’s own chest. Reid’s hand flew to his own head, feeling around dumbly to find the familiar texture of his own hair and his own lips and his own eyebrows.

“Luke!” he whispered harshly to his sleeping boyfriend - or, who he hoped to god was really his boyfriend - and shook him by the shoulder none too gently. “Luke,” he said again, this time at full volume, and Luke’s eyes blinked open slowly, sleepily, one hand coming up to rub his eyes.

“What?” Luke asked without opening his eyes.

“Look, Luke, _look_ , open your eyes!”

Luke did as he was told, and Reid felt a huge, surging rush of relief flood him when Luke stared back at him and Reid was certain that it was really him in there, right where he was supposed to be. Luke broke into a relieved smile as well, letting his head fall back against the bed with a sigh.

“Thank _god_ ,” Luke said, apparently recognizing Reid for who he was as well, and Reid leaned down swiftly to kiss him, press his tongue against Luke’s mouth and suck on his lower lip without a care.

“Think this was all just a bad dream?” he asked when he pulled away and Luke ran fingertips down his cheek and up over his ears.

“Let’s just chalk it up to that,” Luke smiled, his thumb tracing Reid’s chin, “and go back to sleep for a while.”

Reid couldn’t argue with that.


End file.
